They clearly consider iPads general purpose computers, so we're back to the starting concern.

I have never thought that Apple considered iPads general purpose computers. One of their biggest ads about the iPad Pro[0] even implicitly states that.

The proposition, in my mind, that Apple is trying to sell with the iPad to the majority of people who use their computers for social media, content consumption, and office tasks like email and Word document authoring is "you don't need general computing flexibility for the vast majority of things that you do".

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llZys3xg6sU

This is such an unfathomably incoherent thought from an individuals perspective that i don't even know where to start.

Could you give your definition of 'general computing'?

Well, I can run a Turing Machine using javascript on my phone's Safari browser. Do you have another definition of 'general computing' ?

Which part of it do you find unfathomably incoherent? I'll try to explain very simply.

Steve Jobs said in his keynote of the very first iPhone, Apple have put a full-featured operating system on it, rather than a baby OS.