I love when the top two comments on a story really nail it. In this case I think the parent comment combined with the GP comment capture the issue, when the App Store concept is implemented poorly, it negatively effects user experience, vendor experience, and customer satisfaction. When it is done well, it enhances those things.
The key is that Apple has not pulled off a successful App Store concept for MacOS yet, and worse they haven't really internalized some of the things that make App Stores "good" or "bad". As a result, people are leaving.
The response though will be even more interesting, either Apple can give application delivery the focus it needs and become the best in class example, or they can continue to languish, or worse they mandate by fiat use of feature which negatively impacts the brand.
App Stores try to be too many things at once. They started off as discovery, distribution, and payment processors. They have evolved into sort of microservice delivery applications. When the sandbox + App starts looking like a container instance running a unikernel, you've really supplanted the OS entirely. But that model doesn't work well for what many people think of as "productivity" apps.
I hope Apple chooses to give this problem the focus it needs. I could easily see this as the "feature" on which a lot of OS seats are sold.