Malware/app security is always the excuse when it comes to app stores, though. But there's no excuse that their OS can't sandbox apps as best it can to prevent

Malware/app security is always the excuse when it comes to app stores, though. But there's no excuse that their OS can't sandbox apps as best it can to prevent issues like this. Sure there will still be scam apps, but it should be a lot easier to install apps from outside of an app store. It's just a blatant money grab otherwise; Spotify for example is extremely trusted and unlikely to be malware - why can't they have an "install" button on their site to install their app? Because companies that run the app stores want a cut. Why aren't mobile OS' more like desktop OS'? Everyone acts like it's about security but then we get things like Pegasus and Google's Project Zero which is constantly finding stuff anyway. Even now the granularity on permissions and the main problem of user apathy towards this stuff are solvable. I'm on Android and I still don't understand why an app can only ask for gallery permission/access to all files and why I'm not able to only grant it read access to a particular folder in a streamlined way. All of this stuff should be designed around a user's intentions.