These are very good points. My loosely connected thoughts on this: We originally accepted this from Apple, because we didn't consider phones as "real" computin

These are very good points. My loosely connected thoughts on this: We originally accepted this from Apple, because we didn't consider phones as "real" computing devices. Apple would get in a lot of trouble, with no apologist left to defend them, if they turned MacOS into an app-store-only platform. I feel like the major benefit of app-store for consumers is the curation of "good actors". What would be the consequences of adware if the protected app stores were let loose? On one hand I fear it would go completely off the rails, on the other hand it is already worse today on mobile apps than on PC/mac-apps, so can it really get worse? Would better access to opensource apps help alleviate the adware problem?