Well yeah, who wouldn't want a silicon graphics puter on their desktop or one of them their new fangled 'cray desktops' - but who has that kind of cash. Yes, Low End PCs are cheaper than Macs, but you also get what you pay for, low end, in my opinion, comparable machines (purely computer, not monitor) in terms of performance and power and such will cost about the same. PC market benefits from having a lot of suppliers in a few industries, as opposed to Apple being monolithic, but I sitll think a quality PC isn't that cheap, unless you want to build it yourself (and i've never figured that part out yet)
Monitors are an entirely different story, I've never examined 'display/HD' monitors equivalent to what mac provides, because i know i can't afford either.
And yes, there's a style over substance thing for the Mac, a 'cool factor' - but that's the United States and capitalism, crap like that sells
Marketing DOES matter, and the 'best' doesn't always win, just ask the betamax, and who knows if blu-ray is truly 'better' than HD-DVD, they just got all the movie industries, thus sinking HD-DVD not on the merits of technology but on the marketability/future distribution possibilities.
And yes, xerox should be totally ashamed, dealers of lightening is just an excellent 'lay person' read on how xerox screwed up basically 'ruling the world'