Feel free to post a Mac that is 2-3x its equal though you'll be the first person in any of the times I've posted this reply that will be able to do it.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Toshiba+-+Satellite+14%26%2334%3...
Compare it to the 13" Macbook Pro (for the sake of being generous towards the Mac). It's just over half the price, has a bigger screen, more ram, a larger hard drive, and seemingly identical processor and graphics. Naturally there are give and takes on both sides (just about everything is inferior to Apple in terms of "build quality", though this is tough to put a price on), but I don't think it's unreasonable to say this is a comparable laptop, and the specs easily make up for it being $50 over half price.
I don't say this to disparage Apple, I've got a MBP myself, but whenever I look at PCs with comparable specs, I do find that they tend to be about half the price.
I'll withdraw 3x though, that probably is too high and even if I could hunt around and find one example, it's not like that would prove the point.
Nothing is stand out worse but everything is just a bit worse which when your pushing the upper edges adds up to a lot of cost. Not even counting build quality.
On release day, macs are only price-competitive if (1) quality is more important than price and (2) Apple has a product targeting your needs.
When buying a computer, you don't look at specs you look at needs.
"I need a laptop to run the Internet and Microsoft Word". PC: $400. Mac: $1000 or higher if an 11" screen is acceptable. It doesn't matter that the $400 laptop has a crappy screen -- to many people a crappy 15" screen is better than a great 11".
"super fast dev box": PC: $800, Mac: $2500 (and the PC is considerably faster)
"great gaming rig": PC: $1500, Mac: ????
For the others I'm going to need to see examples.
