Regarding amber text:
If it was using an EGA monitor, those were "digital TTL" (you might remember this better from the Radio Shack Tandy line, and I think the C128 equally supported it), so amber was going to be one choice out of a 16-color pallette even on a color display. There's always been the theory that amber or green is easier on the eyes, and either (R+G, or just G) would be a bit less bleary than pure white (R+G+B) on a low-res monitor.
When it comes to casings, the Wikipedia article states that some models were made with a detached keyboard... and the pointing device was there because the designers had hoped for a GUI. (That said, lots of '80s-esque workstations included pointing devices just for drawing/CAD or simulation. C64s had joysticks even if you didn't need them for BASIC 2.0.
)
...and on 80186s, there was at least one Tandy model (the 2000, though I believe that came in a few subflavors), and another clone called the "Eagle" which happened to use them.
Apparently the
NEC V20/V30 series offered the same performance enhancement as the
80186, possibly lacking some of the extra integration; I do know that pretty much every "808x" I owned turned out to actually have a NEC at heart, ranging from my Tandy 1000SX on through to a plethora of 808x-era laptops...
