Got a new Mac book Air recently
So can develop iPhone/iPad apps and also the next WD Mac version
it has a Sold State drive
blazingly fast!
Put parallels on it and installed windows XP in 5 minutes!
XP???
had to install XP first as our W7 copy was an upgrade from XP… 
Most W7 upgrade disks will do a fresh installation I always use “option 4” to be able to install after completely wiping the disk to get rid of the crap from the old OS.
I read the first sentence of your post:
Got a new Mac book Air recently
and immediately felt sorry for you 
the kids are also using it so that they can be exposed to Mac’s/OSX 
The kids!! 8O thats borderline abuse 8O :lol: :lol: :lol:
By no means am I going to doubt it is powerful and fast, but…
First of all I personally really hate the iOS, including the mobile and the PC version - and I am not saying this as someone who simply hates everything with an apple logo on it… I (unfortunately) had no choice and had to use it for quite some time in one of the labs at school and the more I used it, the more I hated the way it behaves, starting from a single-button mouse, limited customization options in iOS for example with regards to sorting your icons on the mobile homescreen etc. etc…
In addition, I use Google services for basically everything and I love Android and with regards to OS, I have lot of experience with various Windows versions and Linux too. I am not saying Windows is an excellent OS, but still (although it is true that Win 8 isnt far from OS in this sense, fortunately I use XP at home and we have Win 7 at work).
However, I do understand that what I said above is quite subjective and I completely understand others might have different opinion about this and I am not going to argue about it.
What isnt subjective however, is the fact that (dont know about US, but at least here in Europe), there is many other laptops and phones in general, which are just as fast and have just as many functions and the fundamental difference is that you can get them for 2/3 of the price if not less…
Apple has done very well in the educational market here in the U.S., sometimes with interesting results. Cancellation of the Los Angeles program was supposedly unrelated to the FBI seizure of 20 boxes of documents from school district headquarters.
Last year when I was still at uni, we also got a “student offer” with discounted Apple products and it was totally absurd… the discount was about 15 %, and the price of the cheapest laptop was absolutely unaffordable for 99% of students… in other words ridiculous price was made less ridiculous and still absolutely pointless…
Here in CZ, if you just finish school and have zero work experience, unfortunately your salary is very close to minimum wage… and even though I now have a masters degree, I work in a government owned company and have set wages. If I wanted to buy an Apple laptop, one of the cheapest, I would have to pay at least my two-months worth of total income…
First of all Im not a programmer and second, I dont live in the US
the Mac Book I did have is now too old to upgrade to the latest OSX version, which is needed to code sign for iOS app development (I was using Macincloud before…painfull on a slow internet connection)