App Stores have nothing to little to do with what you are complaining about. As we are talking about Android: - Play Store: makes sure developers don't do nef

App Stores have nothing to little to do with what you are complaining about. As we are talking about Android: - Play Store: makes sure developers don't do nefarious stuff with the user's data. Yes, for us power users some restrictions are simply wrong, I agree. Use an alternative store for that. But what it does well is optimizing performance: instead of 1 apk with 4 ABI supports (or 4 apk with 1 ABI support each), it can use app bundles to serve you only what your device needs. Also, the Play Store learns what parts of the app are commonly used and contributed this back to make performance improvements for all other users (I was amazed the first time I heard about this). - F-Droid, any other store: ensures your privacy/no-restriction/etc needs are covered. What they all have in common: your app gets updates! Do you want bugs to be there forever? Do you want to go through 100 apps and manually install updates? Please, no one wants to do that. On your Unix machine you also don't manually check all updates using your package manager, and what changelog each has.