I think the point is that for the vast number of people, PCs are already appliances.

It isn’t this change that made them into appliances, it was their natural change in usage - as noted by a previous poster.

For a lot of people -- yes.

But this will affect the future programmers and tinkerers, too. It's as if they are no longer wanted. "But, " you could argue, "hobbyists and enthusiasts can buy specialized hardware". Well, many if not most of the generation of enthusiasts that made the computing world of today possible started with general purpose hardware, not special hardware. They took the common hardware of their day and built stuff with it, doing things that were often not entirely foreseen by the makers of said hardware. And they didn't ask for permission.

If the world of tomorrow consists of most people using gadgets like iphones and ipads, and in order to tinker you need special-purpose hardware, I think we're shooting future kids in their collective feet.

You’re probably right. That said what is an example of something you can’t do note that you could do with more open HW, at a personal level. I get that distributing apps at scale isn’t doable without going through some store . But at a personal level what are the types of things that tinkerers can’t do with a Mac or Arm based PC?

They are not appliances. When I buy an appliance I expect to know by the marketing brochures in advance exactly what it will do, and I expect it to do exactly that until it wears out. When I buy a phone or game system I expect to install new functions on it: things not even thought about by the manufacture.