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That these costs are prohibitive, so people don’t is the main point of the discussion, I think?..
In the old days, you’d adjust the height (and somewhat the reach) via a 6 mm Allen bolt on a quill stem. But swapping for a shorter reach stem would require untaping and retaping half the bar.
The big “plus” of open-face stems (aside from other advantages of the threadless system, which came along with the open face feature, but doesn’t have to be so*) was supposed to be an easier stem swap - without the untaping - to tune the comfort of a bike. With the integrated setups, that’s out of the window.
* I have two threadless stems without an “open face” feature, and one quill stem with an open face feature.
The sense of the OP, similar to that crabon biek thread is that for the vast majority of people and uses the classic bike config, with very slight mods for lower gears and fatter tires, is the most versatile and cost effective way to go.
But maybe another view is that the majority of customers really never work in their bikes and don’t want to pay a shop much to swap parts or repack bearings. For them, an all integrated, no visible wires setup is just nicer. And if they need a different fit, well, just trade that whole bike in for a new one?..
I’m genuinely curious to know what a typical bike shop deals with and what their preferred situation might be.
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