What makes the iPhone general purpose and those others not? Certainly all of them run general purpose CPUs and operating systems, though locked down.
Using a general purpose CPU and general purpose OS does not make the whole device “general purpose.” You’re playing word games here.
>Tesla, Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, Samsung TV, Sony Camera.
are not general purpose computers.
So what causes that difference in classification?
As I said, it's not a technical difference - those products all have fully general-purpose hardware and software inside them - so the difference must be something else.
You said:
>The iPhone is a general purpose computing device unlike any of the examples you’ve given.
>A monopoly over a platform people depend on for almost every aspect of their life is alarming. A monopoly over PlayStation games isn’t nearly as troubling as a monopoly over iOS apps.
If I understand you right, you're saying it's fine for Playstations etc to be restricted in what software they can run, because they're not general purpose devices, but because the iPhone is a general purpose device, it should be allowed to run any software its users want.
But that doesn't make any sense. Why isn't a Playstation a general purpose computer? It certainly could browse the web or run all the same software as an iPhone. Why am I not able to do that? Well, because it's restricted in what software it can run!
That's the point I was obliquely trying to make.
> Tesla, Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, Samsung TV, Sony Camera
They're not all intended to be used for personal computing. Are you going to replace your smartphone with any of these devices?
> If I understand you right, you're saying it's fine for Playstations etc to be restricted in what software they can run
I'm not "fine" with it, and I wish Sony hasn't done that. However, restrictions on a gaming console doesn't warrant the same level of attention as it does for a smartphone.