I get pissëd off more than enough leading cables under the bar tape. Used to love the old STIs with the gear cable sprouting out the side; they provided an alternative place to rest your thumbs on long rides. Banished in the marginal interest of "aero". Hello, here's my old Audax buddy's laundry:
Halfway through Strasbourg-Perpignan, that was. How many fancy integrated bars/stem combos with internal tripes could you dry
your socks on?
This month, too, I've changed stems on my bike twice since I'm getting shorter in my oldage (not a typo). Imagine doing
that with all that internally-threaded gubbins. (Actually, I'm just imagining my own internal gubbins getting threaded externally. Not a pretty sight.)
The current idiocy seems to be driven by the idea that we should all aspire to be boy racers with our noses on the bars and our buttocks halfway to Jupiter. Most of us don't.
<end of rant>