A PIC16C5x powers these for months or years without replacing the battery. Scientists tag animals in the wild with expendable subcutaneous tracking devices powered by these parts. Household appliances depend on PIC variants. A friend developing instruments based on a 32 bit CPU discovered that his PLDs don't always properly recover from brown-out conditions. Not that there's anything wrong with PALs.
Nothing is faster or better at dealing with complex combinatorial logic.
PALs, though, are terrible at handling anything other than simple sequential logic. The limited number of registers and clocking options means you can't use them for complicated decision making. PLDs are better, but when speed is not critical a computer chip might be the simplest way to go. As the industry matures lots of parts we depend on become obsolete. One acquaintance found the UART his company depended on no longer available.