It has gotten a bit cheaper, a lot easier and somewhat better lately. But I agree that it does not make that much sense because you end up with a product that has many flaws and is a bit annoying to use.

The main factor is being able to sell the iMac for that relatively high price. I can't figure out why they are still so expensive because most of the early 5K models are kind of useless nowadays (on low end version, the compute just cannot cope with modern media/files at such a resolution). But maybe it's people converting them to display driving the market...