What you are misunderstanding is that there is more social clout to be gained by complaining about twitter than exploring the available features. The ability to sort by latest doesn't stop people from feeling self righteous by demanding this feature exist.
Disclaimer: I'm pretty new to twitter, so I may be misunderstanding something. On my Twitter Home Screen there are three little stars on the upper right of the central container which allow you to toggle between "top tweets" (ie. 'The Algorithm') and "latest tweets" which is the time based ordering.
