Apple: Expensive for a reason...

Well I can't speak for newer intel macs, but my macintosh has not failed me completely yet. As I am pricing new computers and wondering whether I will buy one outright or build a PC, I see that Apples are still so expensive for what they are. I know that you are paying for all that aluminum, but they are essentially PC's now running OSX. I have a powerbook G4 and I just got finished rendering a video file from HD to 960 x 540. That took approximately 8 hours. I am running 2 gigs of ram and have a 1.25ghz processor. I don't think any other laptops from that time period would be so successful. Of course I couldn't do a full on HD file since the video was almost an hour long. It kept getting to about 16gb of file and failing in some way (i/o error, disk full, etc.). But it did well enough, and all my skits that I do are usually under 5 minutes so I can do those in full HD no problem. The H.264 codec is another issue however.
Sooner or later I will get a new computer, but will it be an Apple? Probably not, I cannot afford a 3500 mac pro with a cinema display, and thats the only mac right now that appeals to me.