Developers need full control over their own devices to develop apps. But they don't need users to have such control. Indeed, for most users to have such control would be unsafe, since they don't know what to do with it anyway.

> the apps people would actually want are things like "ad blocker that blocks the ads in other apps"

How many people would actually pay for such an app? My guess is, not enough to matter.

For that matter, how many people even understand that it's possible to have such apps on their phone? Again, my guess is, not enough to matter.

In other words, the point is not that Searls' and Doctorow's definitions are "wrong". The point is that ordinary users simply do not understand what the issue is with that framing.

> convincing unsophisticated people that something is in their own interest is hardly the same as that thing actually being in their own interest.

Of course not. But convincing them what actually is in their own interest--and that what the megacorps are trying to sell them is not--requires speaking the users' language. And I don't see that Doctorow's framing of the issue as a "war on general purpose computing" has helped at all with that.