Nobody is claiming there currently exists some inherent legal right to have general purpose hardware, they're complaining that they're being sold something inte

Nobody is claiming there currently exists some inherent legal right to have general purpose hardware, they're complaining that they're being sold something intentionally designed to not behave the way a consumer would want. It's the same way people complain about any poorly designed product. If I bought some furniture and it used a custom screw head to incentivize repairs from the manufacturer, I would complain about that too, not because they did something illegal, but because it's a bad product.