Those people don't necessarily fail to realize that the physical aperture has changed, but perhaps they like shooting at 1/60.
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In the real world, a small sensor camera will have difficultly restricting DoF. Maybe they will release a F/0.7 lens on a small-format camera in the future with ISO 16 so you can both limit DoF and have a slower shutter speed, but I have my doubts.
Now we are getting somewhere.
I) Limitations of available lenses.
To take your second point first, I agree, with some qualifications:
a) Current digital cameras with sensors distinctly smaller than 35mm format have difficulty restricting DoF, due to their small actual maximum apertures, and for sufficiently small formats (2/3" and below) this might always be the case, if only for the market driven reasons that for small, convenient cameras, seeking more DoF is far more common than seeking less, so the makers' choice of maximum aperture is driven mostly by speed rather than DoF considerations: f/0.7 will never be in much demand.
Current "smaller than 35mm format" interchangable lens DSLR's are more limited in shallow DoF options at normal to wide focal lengths by current lens options. Again, it is likely that there is not enough demand for less DoF in wide angle, so aperture options wil be driven by speed needs, which are not very great in wide angle: the trend after all is f/4 only rather than f/2.8 even for high quality lenses, taking advantage of the greater usable ISO speed of DSLR's compared to film to reduce cost and weight.
On the other hand, into the telephoto range, the maximum aperture available does not increase much with focal length (or, the minimum f-stop declines: f/1.2, f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4 ...) so for equivalent FOV, DoF options are not much dfferent between APS and 35mm DSLR's, and both can generally get shallower than in MF or LF, where there is less in the way of telephoto lenses with huge maximum aperture diameters. Further, in this realm, more speed is always in demand, so I can easily imagine in the future something like a 300/2 as an APS counterpart of 400/2.8 in 35mm format.
II) Shooting at a given shutter speed.
Now to the first point, of wanting to shoot at a given shutter speed.
If this is for the sake of freezing subject of camera motion, it is only a lower limit on shutter speed, so the only effect is to force larger formats to give up some DoF; those issues to do not prevent the user of a smaller format increasing speed to compensate for the greater speed at a given DoF.
If the issue is having a long enough exposure time to produce some effect like deliberate motion blur, all it takes with the smaller format is some combination of changing to a lower ISO setting (which gives better image quality anyway) and if that is not enough, adding an appropriate ND filter.
Either way, nothing about shutter speed choice prevents the smaller format from achieving DoF as shallow as with a larger format; given appropriate lenses, smaller formats just have a few more options.