Is this a step backwards?
The whole point of the iPad product (and its OS) was the bonkers sand-boxing that made it almost impossible for one app to muck about with another. It was a significant impediment to malware and in combination with not letting *users* fiddle at the file-system level it made the iPad pretty safe for Joe User or indeed Joe User's offspring.
If they are now relaxing all that with a proper files app and letting folks use the thing more like a real computer, perhaps that is a retrograde step. Worse, perhaps it is not a big enough retrograde step, since anyone who actually wanted a "proper computer in a tablet format" already has quite a few options that have gone the rest of the way.
