Originally Posted by
Mithrandir
For my next roadie, I had planned on going with a Shimano 105 5703 crank and front derailleur, replacing the 30t with a 24t, and using it as my "go up anything" bike. As a fat rider, I need the low gears until I get down to a more reasonable weight, and this bike is probably going to be my main roadie for at least the next 3-5 years, by which time I may eventually be light enough to try a compact double (I'm intentionally trying not to be optimistic here).
Shimano is following the market here. Triples are out of fashion for high end bikes. If you want to buy a bike with a triple these days, it'll be the low-end. Triples are considered to be "for beginners" the sort of people who buy sub-$1000 bike. For this reason the only Triples that Shimano makes now are on their low-end groups: Sora, Tiagara (I which when it gets updated next year, may lose the triple), Claris, lower end stuff.
I doubt triples will go away, but you may have to put up with using cranks from low-end Shimano groups like Sora. 9-speed though of course, but in a few years they won't be.
That said, trickle down means that Shimano's lower end groups are pretty nice now. The latest Sora shifters are basically Tiagara shifters (for better or worse) with more plastic.