iOS devices are empirically not general purpose computers, since their manufacturer deliberately specifies applications’ allowed and disallowed purposes.

> shouldn’t

I’m simply describing how things are and not making judgments about how they should be. Apple treats iPhones as appliances that have allowed and disallowed purposes, and rules of the road for app distribution. Every iOS developer who makes a living on the platform knows this is the deal. Going on your blog and acting all surprised that this is the case shows that you either don’t have much experience working with the platform or didn’t do your due diligence before getting into the business.

I guess I'm using a different definition of "general purpose computer" - IMO, it's defined not so much by the device design, but rather what people do with it. It's possible to do almost everything you can do with a normal computer on an iOS device, and for many people, it's their primary or only computing device, which I think makes it sufficiently "general purpose".

(There's also the other definition of "general purpose", which is that you can install your own OS on it and have full control over what software you run. I think Apple should allow that too, but that's sort of a different issue).