Indeed. Put another way, how would lifting Apple's restrictions result in an improved wheat-to-chaff ratio? I can't see how it would increase the amount of wheat, nor can I see how it would reduce the amount of chaff.
Different stores can have different rules and moderation.
I'm not going to argue about the signal to noise ratio between e.g. fdroid vs Google Play, but it should be obvious that while the signal looks the same for both, the noise is very different, with fdroid having outdated, "developer UI" apps as noise and Google Play having fraudulent scams and malware as noise.
Logically this makes sense, but I can't imagine how many decent apps Apple may have rejected for other petty reasons, only to accept the ones that are lambasting people with rentware and other issues the OP mentioned.
Absolutely. But while we know there are a number of kinda dodgy apps in the App Store, one could only imagine how many more they would be without Apple’s oversight/gatekeeping. Not to mention how much better camouflaged the scam apps could be.
