But then you need to learn and remember how to type those letters. There's such a big difference between capital letters, which you need and use constantly, and badly discoverable key combinations, which you need and use infrequently, that your comparison is downright disingenuous.

Sometimes I boot into a machine where the keyboard layout is set to English. Finding the right keys on my non-English keyboard to even just type "ls -l /" or similar, is a major pain in the ass. It would be the same for a Canadian having to type 'ß' on an irregular basis.