“You used to be able...” “... with no attempt to fix” is somewhat contradictory. And, of course, the whole comment is inane. The MacOS security model these day

“You used to be able...” “... with no attempt to fix” is somewhat contradictory. And, of course, the whole comment is inane. The MacOS security model these days very effectively prevents apps from accessing data outside their assigned sandbox. Meanwhile, distributing outside the App Store still requires only a (strict) subset of the steps required for distribution in the App Store.