no the smokey screen was unintentional and therefore is a flaw , but like it was mentioned it could have been avoided by making the lcd panel airtight ,as far as i know there was a invention called glue ,
but the rest of "making it inaccessible for the average user " was intentional , and quiet a few users did damage the panel and even more have killed their isight camera when they opened the iMac to clean or to upgrade , but at least the unibody design as good as it might look , it is totally unpractical if you have to remove the lcd panel to access the computer
from that point the iMac g5 first generation was a superior design in therm of user friendliness
here a video for people who never seen how a first gen iMac G5 was opened (ignore the ram upgrade part )just watch how easy it is to open and close again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgG-dK2YMnE