It boggles my mind that neither macOS nor Windows has an official, comprehensive package manager. Sometimes the only way to get software is to download binaries from a Google search like it's 2003. On macOS, 90% of what you'd ever need is on Homebrew—this is more or less a solved problem—but it's still unofficial and Apple promotes their pointless App Store instead. In Windows land, the unofficial package managers ar…
Package management has a boot-strapping problem for mainstream platforms: the same people telling the public that you should install Firefox using their ad bundle installer would instantly pivot to saying that you should install Firefox by adding their “store” to your system package repository list, and then SEO-ing their instructions as hard as they can.
Homebrew works because the audience is heavily technical and they don’t accept every app. Change either of those and quality would decline, and gaps in package coverage normalizes the behavior of installing things from outside of the store.
The real solution is probably something regulatory requiring Microsoft and Apple to run a basic store at cost, possibly allowing premium add-on services, or perhaps having a way to setup other stores with proof of liability insurance and auditing. The basic tier could be something like having a verification process for developers and a robust way to yank abusive apps.