Its not that weird. Don't forget when iPhone launched, you couldn't load any applications at all. It was all going to be web apps. "It's a phone, an appliance - not a computer". The majority of people are quite happy with having their phones as a 'it just works, its relatively secure, it doesn't crash all the time or run out of battery' thing.
And those perfectly happy people could continue to install apps via the app store without ever even thinking about the fact that some people install apps that aren't explicitly approved by Apple. And when you start getting into issues of free speech and people fighting for their rights against an oppressive government, it starts to feel like people other than the big happy majority matter quite a bit.
