I'm sorry, but this is a terrible argument. None of my users care about having root on our file server either, but if I didn't have it, it wouldn't be useful as anything more than a very expensive paperweight. Most readers probably don't care if the authors have access to a typewriter, but they depend on that to be able to read books.

Similarly, most iPad users won't care about having root on the thing, but they shouldn't. They people that do care about this are the developers, and the work of the developers becomes the tool of the masses. The complaint about this thing not being open is that apple is restricting what sorts of tools can be made. While the end-user might not care about the specific mechanism of restriction, they do feel its effects.

It's not a small PC, it's a big PDA. I'd be surprised if you could have a shell or write code on it.