I don't think anyone saw this coming!
I've stated elsewhere I don't think Eberron as a setting is really compatible with 5E. The core assumptions that are essential to Eberron don't exist this time around.
Fair enough, much of what Eberron has going on... doesn't match my preferences, so I am no expert. With only 2(?) iterations though, I think it's hard to pin down what is essential to the setting though. Not for individual fans, any new take on something is guaranteed not to please all of it's fans, but on the whole and/or two it's creators.
I think 5e is very flexible though, and with some additional/variant rules I think we will see it used for some very different things in the future, some of them turning out well.
The setting is the 1920s-era adventure films and stories, like Tarzan and Indiana Jones, only with magic instead of technology. In the first core Eberron book, it talked massively about mass production of magic items. An NPC class was even created for the setting to match this (the magewright). The factory-style production of magic items was also incorporated into the backstory of the warforged race, who were basically mass-produced weapons of war, and the artificer class.
This is the setting that not only introduced magic trains, but gave you what was necessary for a character to build one.
Then there's the expansion material, which introduced things such as schemas (magic item blueprints), and even artifacts that could be constructed.
You really can't remove the idea of magic items being mass-produced without introducing a new origin for a player race, rewriting major parts of the war that just happened which are key to the setting, restructuring the history of three continents, dropping or heavily rewriting 90% of the plotpoints for the continent players are likely to spend most of their time on, or rewriting a character class.
It's almost like writing an entirely new setting. And this wasn't a setting intended to change and update as time goes on, unlike Faerun.
Sure, but even if "mass-produced magic items" is essential to the setting, what does that really mean for players. It is not as though PCs were walking into the game head to toe in +5 magic gear, what the party had was still limited to work within the system. Magic trains and ancient races built by magi-tech doesn't have much impact mechanically on a 1st level adventuring party, and things that might are not impossible to tweak. Is this abundance of magic items necessarily linked to +X items, or is that just the system it was designed for. How many +X items can 5e handle with some rules tweaks?
Heck, keeping atunement in place, or tweaking it could go a long way to dealing with these issues. Obviously things like this will be a change but they need not lose the flavour of the original setting.
Anyways, somewhat off-topic, I see your point but also potential solutions.
I think it is intentional that they don't get cantrips as many of the abilities they get from their subclass are at will.Spellcasting
They are a 1/3 caster, without cantrips? Oversight much? Cantrips are one of the best parts of 5e, proliferate access to them please.
I like it. I'd like them to ramp up the artificer theme even further.
Instead of making the class a spellcaster (we already have plenty of those), the artificer should create little inventions that give spell-like abilities. So instead of learning "cure wounds", you create a little heal-o-matic device (perhaps resembling a gonzo syringe) which otherwise operates like the cure wounds spell. And so on.
By the time they get to higher levels, they'll be walking around with a backpack full of useful little inventions - which is exactly how I imagine them.