The rationale behind Apple’s unibody aluminum housings isn’t just aesthetic appeal: it’s also sturdiness. Unibody aluminum adds a bit of heft to an ultra-thin Apple portable, but it makes that device also harder to break despite its thinness.

There’s always room for improvement though, and if a new patent published by the USPTO is anything to go by, future iPads might trade in their aluminum shell for ultra-strong carbon fiber.

NVIDIA has just announced a mid-range upgrade graphics card for the Mac Pro: the Quadro 4000 For Mac.

Aimed at workstation applications (video, graphics, scientific data crunching), the Quadro 4000 falls in the middle of NVIDIA’s professional lineup. It features NVIDIA’s latest Fermi architecture, boasting 256 CUDA cores and 2GB of GDDR5 memory.

But for a mid-range card, it’s pretty pricey: $1,199 when it ships later this month. The PC-compatible card is about $700. It shouldn’t take long for GPU hackers to create a Mac-compatible ROM. We’ll keep an eye out.

Here’s NVIDIA’s full press release:

There’s a small but real segment of the iOS accessory market that thrives because of the iPhone’s inability to be used while wearing coverings over your hands. Little capacitive stickers you sew onto the finger pads of your gloves so you can use your iPhone’s touchscreen, or gloves with capacitive thread sewn right into the fingers.

As winter fast approaches, you might even be thinking of buying yourself one of these accessories… but a recent development in the technology of touchscreens might obviate the need for these accessories entirely if Apple brings them to future devices.

Skyfire Web Browser is a full-featured web browser and the first application for iOS that converts Adobe Flash videos in to HTML5, allowing you to play them on your iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s been incredibly popular in its first week and has rocketed to the top of the paid chart in the App Store. It’s also one of our favorite apps for iOS this week.

Also on our list of must-haves is iDJ – an application from Numark that makes it simple to create seamless, synchronized playlists using you iTunes music library on your iPad. iDJ’s patented technology allows you to assemble customized soundtracks to accompany and enhance every occasion.

AppSwitch is another great app that deserves a place in our favorites this week. It has been described as “the missing app that should have been in the box,” and allows you to monitor all apps and processes running on your iOS device so you’ll always know what’s running in the background.

Check out our full list of iOS must-haves after the break!

We’ve received a tip about an unexpected application for the NFC chip Apple is expected to build into the iPhone 5.

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a short-range wireless connection technology that would turn the iPhone into an electronic wallet or security passkey.

NFC is already in use in Asia and is expected to explode here in the next three to five years, especially if Apple adopts the technology. NFC has been rumored for the iPhone 5, and Apple appears to be gearing up for a NFC revolution. It has made a lot of NFC hires, including a a leading NFC expert and has patented a lot of NFC technology.

If the iPhone 5 does have NFC, applications like an eWallet are a no-brainer. But we’ve been told that Apple is also researching NFC for remote computing.

The MacBook Air, heralded earlier this week for its ultra-thin 0.68-inch profile and lack of any hard disk drive, is putting a knife in the back of drive makers. That’s the word from one company hurrying to move from dinosaur drives to a flash memory future.

“The new announcement of the MacBook Air is really stabbing Seagate and Western Digital in the back,” LacCie CEO Philippe Spruch, told the Wall Street Journal. The French-based Lacie is transforming quickly into a flash-based firm. The MacBook Air, instead of a hard disk drive uses flash for storage and a read-only memory card for installations. Who are the winners and losers in the storage upheaval?

Want to pick yourself up one of Sanho’s amazing HyperMac batteries, which will allow you to recharge your MacBook, iPhone or iPad for dozens or even hundreds of hours on a single charge?

Well, better get moving: Sanho has just sent out a notice saying that they will soon stop selling their line of HyperMac products due to their current legal woes with Apple.

Last week, we all saw a fantastic flow chart showing off who was suing whom for patent infringement in the mobile landscape. Then we saw the same chart as re-imagined by a competent infographic designer.

The only problem? Both charts were based off of the bad data of a New York Times post back in March, which included numerous lawsuits that never actually occurred. That prompted Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick to try his hand at his own version of a “who’s suing whom” chart… which ends up revealing that even more companies are suing each other over mobile patents than anyone had initially thought.

Love your MacBook’s MagSafe adapter? Good news: it might be coming to the next iPhone or iPad.

An Apple repair company called Mission Repair is arching eyebrows this morning with the claim that they have gotten their hands on the next iPad’s aluminum case, which they say has a port on the side for landscape docking.

Although we’ve seen a patent for an iPad with the ability to dock in both landscape and portrait modes before, this is the first time we’ve seen physical indication that Cupertino might be considering two dock connectors on the next iPad.