The last one I bought (a 13" about 18 months ago) wasn't. Yes, you could buy a Windows laptop from Dell or HP or someone for half the price, but it would have less than half the battery life, it would be larger (albeit probably not heavier; Macbooks are the densest laptops I've found) and it would have a plastic shell instead of aluminium which feels worse when new and won't age well. It would also come laden with crapware, which isn't an issue for me since I've put Linux on it anyway, but it is a big deal for most people - the majority of machines I see running badly these days are doing it because of software, not hardware.

I guess if you're coming from the perspective of maximum CPU performance per $ being the key metric, then they probably aren't a great deal, but for most people that's not really the most important thing any more.