> 1) Installing software directly from the developer --along with being able to develop yourself-- is not only perfectly fine, it's what makes personal computing great.
Nobody's stopping you from that, not even SmartScreen. The issue is that close to 100% of all malware is installed by users and the critique has been that Microsoft is offering neither sufficient protection nor a safe(r) alternative.
SmartScreen and Windows Store - whatever your personal opinion about those might be - are completely optional ways to address this critique.
> 2) Package management is an over-engineered and inflexible solution that creates more problems than it solves.
All major *nix-based operating systems and their distributions seem to disagree with you on that; Most programming languages included.
> 3) Installers aren't as bad as package managers but are still overly complex and cause problems. Applications should be single files or directories that can be moved or copied anywhere you want. Numerous OSs had applications work this way by convention and it is also how AppImage works.
And that solves the security and trust issues how?
> 4) Application-level security should be applied by default and at the OS level. Mobile OSs got this (mostly) right.
Oh yeah, especially mobile OSes where every app wants full access to everything or just won't install/run. Pop-ups are just as bad because now you just train users to simply ignore them.
There is no silver bullet here, and SmartScreen isn't some "evil gatekeeper" that just exists to thwart independent software development. It's just an imperfect tool to address security and trust issues with random software packages downloaded from the internet.