iPhone has a computer in it, but it is not a general purpose computer. Why is this concept so hard to get? There are tons of things that have CPUs and billions of lines of code to run them, but they are not personal computers.
Which ones?
Anyone who complains that they can't do something that Apple won't let them is a candidate. Anybody who jailbreaks is definitely one. There are plenty.
Customers, of course, don't want a trade-off - they want power and safety. IOS is an attempt to get as close to that as possible, but it only works until iphone users want to do something on their phone that Apple doesn't want to let them do - that's when the illusion comes crashing down. When this happens, Apple users don't say, "Well, I'd like to run XYZ on my phone but I understand that I can't because that's the trade-off I made in exchange for a nice app store with no viruses in it," they say, "What the hell! I should be able to run XYZ if I want, it's my phone!"
The point is that the iPhone / iOS devices could be more open (to user control and modification at the OS level, to third-party peripherals, to third-party software distribution and installation, etc)... but, due to fiat policy rather than any significant technical constraint, it is not.
Is that hard to "get"?
Are you perhaps displacing? Do you think it's actually fair to take the view that because other people may have made note of an issue repeatedly in the past, it is therefore to be frowned upon if any new person also makes note of it from their own perspective? I guess you'd also tell Alan Kay, who made the actual comment under original discussion here, to muzzle it because his thought is boring? In any case, by your own logic, shouldn't you not have replied at all because no doubt many, many other people have replied to this issue as you are here, given that it is apparently such well-trod ground? Aren't you then being hypocritical?
And do you actually think it's fair-minded to call what I specifically wrote a "complaint"?
Your complaint makes little sense, and has no foundation.
Well, maybe a little.
Just because something can be done doesn't necessarily mean it should be done, does it? This is not a commentary on the iPhone as a computer, but about products in general.
Lots of things have general purpose computer parts, but serve a very specific purpose. What did Steve Jobs pitch the iPhone as again? A phone, an iPod, and an internet communicator? I don't remember "personal computer" being one of those things.
So yes, this is the thing that Apple wants to make. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.