> The App Stores are a shovelware wasteland, these days. Some companies have over 400 apps on their stores;
They have been for at least a decade, maybe forever.
Content discovery and selection is still unsolved problem. Steam might be doing the best job but still imperfect.
> things Apple seem to care about in these review
Yes! It's so glaring the difference between how they position App Review in court or in marketing materials, which is always about quality and safety, and how it is used in practice 99% of the time, which is "Does it pose any threat to an Apple business model?" (e.g. Spotify isn't a threat as long as it's hobbled by paying 30% App Store tax that Apple Music doesn't have to). XBOX Game Pass was a threat because they don't want games being sold where nobody has paid Apple a cut for each game.
"You wouldn't want finding apps to be as much of a minefield as downloading programs off the Web used to be, would you?" they say. "Our curation is the only reason you are safe from malware on an iPhone!"
It only takes a search or two on either "App Store" to see that they have no problem with apps whose business models could not possibly succeed without deception, such as simple calculators or wallpaper image catalogs with $19.99 weekly subscriptions after free trial.
It's interesting to me that Apple have been pioneers in two separate areas:
1. sandboxing and permissions, which arguably they have done a B+ job at. Not as fine-grained as Android in most ways, but better at what it does do than anything else for consumers.
2. App Store gatekeeping.
They want us to believe their platforms are only secure because of #2 but I think they're pretty darn secure just because of #1 and #2 has basically no relevance due to how lax they are about the things that I care about, which is basically scams and knock-offs.
I don't think it's an unsolved problem. The fact that Steam and doesn't overwhelm you with 100 low-effort ripoffs when you're searching for AAA game means it's possible, at the very least, to get that bare minimum done.
I feel this is particularly egregious with the Mac App store, since Apple requires manual reviews for all apps. It's just that that the things Apple seem to care about in these review don't really seem to improve user-facing quality very much compared to app store with a more lenient review process.