Bike porn

You are right, but your overplaying the "cables are unreliable" card. Infact a lot of guys with jumpbikes ride with cable / disks because you don't have to worry about ripping out / bending fittings.

That's a different issue to the normal reason for switching to hydraulics. Cables do indeed work fine when new, and are robust in crashes, but they also get worse quite quickly if used in all weathers without maintenance, and they stretch over time. It's horses for courses, innit?