macOS is not iOS, and at least for the time being can't be iOS either even if Apple wanted it to be because there is no crypto signed hardware chain stack on al

macOS is not iOS, and at least for the time being can't be iOS either even if Apple wanted it to be because there is no crypto signed hardware chain stack on all supported Macs. Users can still modify essentially all aspects of the system if they want to (though Apple has made it more and more work for system stuff), and in turn allow software to do so as well. There is also plenty of legacy software that a lot of customers care a great deal about. So it'd be immensely difficult to try to retrofit the kind of system that would be needed to give users more control over this sort of thing, and impossible/very heavy to do so in a way that wouldn't break a lot of stuff without developers updating. It's a genuinely tough nut to crack and involves some trade offs. Apple's chosen decent-in-principle solution is to harden the base default system pretty heavily and have a curated ecosystem (the MAS) that they nudge users into by default, and where they can flat out ban this kind of thing. Ideally users who opted for other channels would know what they were doing. The big problem is that the MAS fucking sucks in a ton of unforced ways (like no update pricing system), and is also far too limited in many others (from non-Apple source options to single safety levels). So in turn a vastly higher percentage of users than would be ideal are forced to turn elsewhere for a lot of quality software even from small indy players. The many bad parts relieves pressure on lazy/bad developers to deal with parts that would be genuinely good. That's life with Apple sometimes though. They're bad at multitasking.