It’s a mistake. We’re paying $1000+ for this tool that presents itself as a versatile information slinger, well I hope it can do more than Facebook, Instagram and Gmail. This is an amazing platform, completely damaged by its limited IO. Apple is moving away from its roots. Not good. Creators will go elsewhere, their desirable creations will become native elsewhere, and the sheep will follow.

It's a bit late to say so. Apple has moved away from its accessible hardware roots when it has moved from Apple II to the original Macintosh.

Just to remind, the original iPhone did not allow user-installable apps at all.

Why try to appeal to the creators when people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for pretty social media boxes?

While I don't like this answer, I feel like it's probably the most accurate.

Anecdotally, I know a lot of iPhone owners, and of them only one person uses their phone for music content creation. And my hunch is that one friendship may just be a statistical anomaly compared to the greater population of all iPhone owners.

I think it'd be a mistake to ignore them. Content creators are cool and they set trends and fashion. The first iterations of the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone were nothing special, yet they were successful because they were used by cool people. i.e. Apple products became status symbols.