Every time Apple makes a big move, tech nerds announce the impending death of "general purpose" computing at Apple's hands.

Well, I have a newsflash: Apple's products are going to cause increasing worry about the death of personal computing, because Apple will increasingly make products for people to use, rather than to compute with.

Normal people don't "compute"

The "general purpose" computer is user-programmable, or can have arbitrary programs installed. Techies care deeply about this level of control. Normal people don't want to program, and don't care where the programs come from, so long as they do the right things.

Normal people don't "compute" as such. They want to achieve specific non-computer goals like chatting with friends and seeing pictures of family. They talk, they shop, they read, they play and create. Normal people don't care if the mechanism is a general purpose computer or a ziplock full of unicorn dust.

Techies want to "compute". This means to experiment, play, check out leading edge capabilities, and search for new computer-powered capabilities they might like to use in their lives. Normal people don't search for new things to do on a computer — they have real-world goals, and see if a device can help accomplish any of them.

Apple Targets Normal People

Note that normal people require a streamlined platform that is fit-to-task. Techies require a platform with nearly unlimited flexibility. When designing products, these goals are often incompatible.

Apple wants to make products that normal people use to take care of normal people's tasks. When the usability for normal people clashes with a general purpose attribute, they will choose the normal user. The result is that newer Apple products will look less and less like general purpose computers as they become better tools for normal people.

This doesn't mean the death of general purpose computing. It just means the death of pushing general purpose computers on normal people who don't want or need them.