When Steve Jobs used pie charts in his keynotes, he was addressing an audience of developers, consumers, and loyalists. These were people he needed to keep impressed, and a great way to impress people is to make the data seem really BIG and compelling and outsized. (Remember that one presentation with the graph that expanded its axes and "zoomed out" in real time? That's serious data showmanship right there).
Pie charts may not be the most accurate way to represent data, but when your goal is to sell a story, they can do the job nicely. That even nontechnical consumers are used to seeing them makes them easily digestible, too; in this sense, pie charts are a form of universally recognizable data language. Pie may be junk food of a sort, but it's comfort food all the same.
You seem to believe that there is a "best" way to represent data, but therein lies the assumption that all audiences are largely homogenous. I disagree. There are certainly universal principles for good presentation design, but data representation is a tough one. The sophistication and expectations of the audience play a huge role in how you should speak to that audience.