I can see where your arguments are coming from and I think your opinion makes sense.

However anyone can download the code from their website and compile it on the iphone simulator (which, together with XCode is a free download from Apple). You could argue that you still need a non-free os to run it which won't make RMS happy, but then again on a PC you more often than not have a non free BIOS that's needed to run the OS. And pretty much any computer has a non-free hardware.

Because of this, and other reasons, in my opinion there's nothing wrong with selling a GPL program on the Itunes store as long as anyone who bought it can get the source code.

Think about what sort of programming you would like to do. Remember that writing software is only a way of solving some wider problem, so think what should that be? What would you love doing? To get anywhere as a programmer you have to undersand and enjoy working in the wider field. Very few people end up writing OS kernels or other "programming for the sake of computers". The rest of us make tools for other people (Word processors, painting programs, CAD, banking software, databases, you name it). Think which of these above would you enjoy working on.

Once you've decided on that, choose any language you like, and start working on some small relevant project. Once you have something put the link on your CV. At our company, once we get someone's CV and it looks good, we go to google and find what the guy has done. Publications, software projects etc. Then we decide whether to interview. During the interview we'll talk about that. We don't care whether the person can do Java or C++ if they're graduates. (even though we prefer C++).