Comment by pdonis

> To most people, "general purpose computing" just means their computer (or more likely their phone, these days) can run any app they want it to run.

That's the same definition as the one where developers have control over their devices, because that's necessary for those apps to exist and be used even if you're not the author of them.

Consider what most phone apps these day are. The vast majority are just a front end to a web endpoint and the app itself could just as well have been a browser. Nobody actually needs those to be apps.

Meanwhile the apps people would actually want are things like "ad blocker that blocks the ads in other apps" which are precisely what the war on general purpose computing has deprived people of. Because the scummy ad-laden app approved by the platform has to be "protected" from the "untrusted" open source ad blocker.

Likewise apps that back up the data in other apps or otherwise create competition for the platform's cloud services, competing browser engines that could properly support PWAs so that the "should have been a web page" apps can actually be a web page, etc.

Megacorps that want to lead ordinary people down the garden path may convince some of them that this is "for their own good", but convincing unsophisticated people that something is in their own interest is hardly the same as that thing actually being in their own interest.