Macs are not and will never be a significantly large portion of total PC sales unless Apple completely overhauls them. And that means more than just making them a little cheaper and incrementally faster. I'm talking totally getting into gear and radically changing what we know about the Mac. Even then, there's little chance of the Mac being really successful. So they should just keep things as they are. Think about it - the biggest PC companies are failing to turn a profit, even though they use all the same strategies that people say Apple should use to become more successful. You can cry for a cheap loss-leader computer all the way, but it won't do crap because you know that all the other companies are doing the same thing, and it's not doing crap for them either. Combine that with the huge amount of skepticism (or total lack of awareness) towards Macs among the general public, and it really kills any possibility of having any success no matter what Apple does.
I doubt Macs will change much in the next ten years. They'll continue to be overpriced and underspecced relative to PCs, even if the processors Apple uses achieve performance parity with PC companies. We already see it today - take the video cards offered in current Macs. Although the Radeon 9800XT for the high end G5 is a nice option, the rest is pretty pathetic. I took a look at HP's website, and there is a $650 desktop that has a 256 MB video card as standard equipment! While it's true that every Mac ships with a real video card instead of integrated/shared graphics, many of HP's low-end PCs can be equipped with 128 MB graphics cards for something like $80 extra. Meanwhile, the $3000 PowerMac is the ONLY Mac that ships with even 128 MB of VRAM, and that much is only available on expensive PowerMacs and PowerBooks costing $2000 and up. That is only an example of Apple's stubbornness in the face of rapidly increasing technology.
My point is that if Apple continues as they are going, their marketshare will only continue to decrease. I don't know if they are unaware of how poorly their machines compare to the rest of the industry (unlikely) or if they just don't care. I think it's the latter - they've pretty much accepted that no matter what they do, Macs will never be popular enough, and the people who would normally buy Macs will get them whether they offer price/performance parity with PCs or not. So they focus entirely on digital music, one area where they are kicking ass and taking names. I can't blame them.
By the way, I think Apple's ideas of what "low end," "middle of the road," and "high end" mean are very skewed. To Apple, "low end" pricing means $800-$1200, middle of the road is $1200 to $2000, and high end pricing is above $2000. To the rest of the world, those numbers are approximately cut in half (with the exception of some configurations of G5, which are about equal in price to comparable PCs). Meanwhile, they think that 32 MB of VRAM is low end, with 64 MB being middle of the road and 128 MB meaning top of the line. You can double those numbers to see what the rest of the world thinks. But again, they're saving money and holding their profit margins strong because, like I said, Mac-loyal people will buy Macs regardless of their specs, and non Mac-loyal people won't buy Macs anyway.
EDIT: Interesting thing I found out recently. Apparently you can now buy a Pentium M for desktops. This is important because the Pentium M runs at a maximum of 2 GHz, and that's the brand newest variant with 2 MB of L2 cache that isn't shipping in any laptops yet. This is a sign of Intel waking up and starting to produce processors that can be fast and efficient even at a low clock speed. I've heard the 1.7 GHz Pentium M can match a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4, so I wouldn't be surprised if the new 2 GHz Pentium M can keep up with the fastest 3.4 GHz Pentium 4.
If Intel really does move away from the Pentium 4 and primarily develops the Pentium M even for desktops, this means more competition for the G4 (which is now another low clock speed, low heat, high efficiency processor). I doubt it'll happen, but Apple COULD move their computers to using a special variant of x86 that makes use of the new, highly efficient chips coming out for x86. Until now, x86 meant hot and power-hungry, while PPC meant cool and efficient, but now that that's changing, I don't see why Macs couldn't run on x86. They could keep the beautiful industrial design and high quality components, but run on different hardware.
EDIT 2: Apple no longer cares about the education market either, apparently. I just learned from ArsTechnica that they dropped to 14% marketshare in education, down from 30% last year. Meanwhile, Dell is at 44%.
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