cuz there's no pic?

I miss the old all aluminum DA. 7800 was thing of beauty, 7900 looks (except for the crank) like it was designed by Toyota.

And that would be bad because.....?

Form follows function.

Toyota's are plain jane mobiles.

Which is exactly how you should design a component group.

I think Shimano did 7900 wrong, however. The exposed cable carriers and indexing mechanisms on the shifters is going to cause problems.

Fixed.

What did I do to them?

Tell them I'm sorry, and that I'll build a Dura-Ace 7800 bike for the winter.

You're lost kid. We hardly knew you.

Actually I was playing with a group the other day and that was one of the things I liked. My reasoning was that you could flush the internal mech out in a solvent tank, get an air hose in there and then maybe some lube.

This is really hard to do with previous designs. It's almost serviceable (in a Shimano, non-serviceable kind of way).

I don't like anything else about the look of the group, however. FUGLY.

I also haven't ridden it so I can't comment on the function aspect of the group. I'm sure it works really well though and feels good, too.