> We'll see if Apple's ad efforts extend beyond the App Store but even so, the incentives here are all fucked up. Why bother making App Store search better and cleaning up spam/scam apps when these problems enable a new revenue stream in the form of paid placements?

All commercial vendor app stores are trash fires. We need anti-trust action to force the ability to subscribe to alternative app stores. There's just no incentive to improve them once users are locked in and as you say there are often perverse incentives to do the opposite.

I'm really glad both power users and developers on the Mac roundly rejected the Mac App Store. I actually do use it for things like communicator apps and other limited-scope apps since auto-updates are nice, but if Apple pushed app-store-only for Mac or even made installing apps outside the store too hard (pushing via dark pattern) it's one of the things that would drive me off the platform.

I realize there are security benefits but like I said the App Store is a trash fire. They all are.