What's different in the "MediaWiki of today" as regards allpages? I suspect it was designed to resemble encyclopedias and dictionaries' browsing by "volumes". For those who don't remember it, here is a copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20130815011644/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:AllPages In principle, it's a useful feature to see at a glance what a wiki contains, skipping – say – the few tens of thousands of similarly named asteroids or proteins, especially if the wiki is lazy and no proper category tree is maintained. In general, if you want to get it removed you should probably discuss it on mediawiki-l, given that they performance issue affecting Wikimedia wikis seems resolved (thanks!).
As regards pageviews, they're not particularly useful because you won't find the visits to the filters by namespace or whatever (which personally I often enter directly in the location bar without using the form).
Nemo