In Hasbro 3.X, Archery had one weakness that melee never shared- it could not convert large attack bonuses into damage, as with power attack. Pathfinder addresses this with Deadly Aim, but more importantly addresses several of the issues power attack had (optimal attack values that made some players use calculators to determine how much to attack for, broken feats and class combinations that allowed for conversion of AC to damage, bullshit synergy with certain spells).

The penalties of archery that are more reasonable remain, such as difficulty in dealing with targets that use line of sight (as a PC, your main concern here is with intelligent targets, mindless ones generally don't have this plan), difficulty in striking prone targets, problems with concealment and any creatures standing in between you and the target, and inability to benefit from a host of minor boosts on weapons and spells. The inherent inability to not apply combat maneuvers at range has been addressed in some optional content that we don't use (it's worded pretty badly and generally imbalanced). A subtle disadvantage is that some opponents ignore some arrows, or have extra AC to arrows- the first can be mitigated somewhat by shooting more, the second pretty much by rolling better. The most important penalty is piercing damage. Piercing is a great damage type, but when something resists it, it really resists it, and there's no way around that.

But the benefits are really cool. In addition to the obvious inherent power of range, rapid shot mostly splits the difference between using a two-handed weapon and dual wielding, for far less feat investment (to the point where I've considered buffing dual wield further in E6). Archery also lets you do the following trick with enchanted ammunition:

Bow enchanted with, for instance +3 to hit and damage.
Ammo enchanted with, for instance, +1 to hit, ghost touch, and fiery.

This allows you to have a +3 to hit, +3 to damage (the +1/+1 is superceded), ghost touch, and fiery. This isn't exactly sustainable, as enchanted ammunition costs the full amount of a weapon for every 50 arrows, but it is a nice trick for when the world is on the line.

In addition to the nerdy archer who ends up with 20 arrows of a variety of bane enchantments, you can also have a selection of metals making up the tips. Cold iron, adamantine, silver, whatever Rearden metal your libertarian DM gave you? Check, got'em all. Obscure uranium arrow, I choose you! This is just something that melee characters can't reliably cover, even in a world of tura gems that makes it less annoying for them.

I played an archery specialized ranger in the previous E6 campaign, and I was extremely happy to be able to deal consistent damage in most encounters. I had actually gone further and had some training in melee weapons which allowed me to contribute to the enemies that were functionally immune to piercing damage, which may have made my experience particularly rosy, but I really think it's a solid build that beats out most other ranged options for consistency.