It still is the most elegant solution you can get for a Mac, and as always, Apple choses elegancy over standards compliance.
Elegant for the Mac laptops. For the Mac mini ( and Mac Pro if had Thunderbolt ) there is the question of the dangling, superfluous power cord. Apple doesn't always go for elegant. It is more combination of elegant and quantity.
It would make sense to come up with a Thunderbolt-less $799 monitor. There is little to no margin loss if they simply just dump the additional TB complexity, power distribution complexity, and cost along with the additional price. It would still share costs with a TB docking station ( 27 panel and most of the enclosure design) but only would have a USB 3.0 hub instead of a full fledged USB 3.0 controller ( Ethernet , FW would drop also.).
So it does less non display stuff and you'd pay less.
Take a look at other monitors using the same LG 27" 2560x1440 IPS panel, you'll see they cost the same while being made out of plastic and having no webcam, no speakers, no FireWire/Thunderbolt/Ethernet hub, no charger for your laptop and a lower resale value.
Generally, the 2013 models are heading for the $700-800 street pricing levels. These display also generally have more video switching conversion capabilities to (i.e., handle 2-3 inputs formats. ) and factory calibration if pointing at the $900-1,100 level monitors.