Going on internet comments they've been marching towards this for years. I've yet to see anything actually happen.
So instead of going on evidence and public statements by Apple executives - statements that have repeatedly said the Mac is the Mac - you choose to believe random internet comments?
There is a delicate balance between protecting average users who have no clue what is safe software and what isn't vs allowing power users and developers to do what they want. Since the days of ActiveX controls we've know if you give users a "Please pwn me" dialog they'll just click "OK". They've been trained that computers put up lots of pointless dialogs they can't understand even if they take the time to read them so just click until it gets out of the way. Even with default security settings if opening an app from an "unidentified developer" fails you can go into System Preferences > Security and click "Allow".
macOS is trying to protect people by default while still allowing the HN crowd to turn these protections off if they so wish.
Apple Silicon Macs still allow you to disable SIP which turns off a lot of modern protections. You can still downgrade boot security. It is a deliberate decision to continue allowing ad-hoc code signing. Software can still be distributed outside the Mac App Store either with a Developer ID or without. The vast majority of Mac users don't know or care what any of these things are but the Mac has always allowed them and as Craig has said several times over: the Mac is still the Mac. It is still the system that supports hobbyists and developers - people who sometimes want to poke at the system, install their own kernel extensions, etc.
If your complaint is that things are not wide-open by default anymore then I don't know what to tell you. We don't live in the same software landscape we once did and there are far more malicious actors out there. Protecting users by default is the right thing to do IMHO.
I was literally making the point that these rumours have persisted for years and nothing has ever come of it.
I couldn’t agree more with the rest of your comment!
EDIT: I'm getting downvoted, maybe because I was too cryptic. To clarify, it seems like the rumors that gain traction with mainstream sites and Apple-focused YouTube channels and forums tend to have strong correlation with something that will happen later.
They're not going to remove the ability to run arbitrary code or the unix core. There would literally be no reason to buy a mac over another product of theirs.
Yes, they won't support dual booting linux - you can run a VM, but if that's a dealbreaker - fair enough.
There's absolutely no chance however that savvy users will not be able to continue running non app store apps.
Apple want control, but they're not stupid enough to completely lock down the development machines for their entire ecosystem.
There isn't much people can do about that though? You basically have to run their OS to develop apps for Apple products, and people who don't develop apps for Apple products don't use Mac's anyway. Just make a laptop appstore with everything you need to develop Apple products and they could force all programs to go on it and they would lose almost no users of their laptops.