I really think this line of thinking is overegged. It is one thing to make a device easy to use, yet quite another to lock them out for creative purposes.
It's not about making things easy to use, but about making them harder to break. Creative tinkering is simply not taken into the consideration for most consumer products. Things like support load, RMA rate and consumer protection laws is.
Like I say. It’s a cover story. They could make devices serviceable at the same time but it is more convenient for them not to, and to even push the envelope of what’s acceptable.