[sneak]

The panic is that it is an anticompetitive moat that they are setting up that, if used in such a way, would allow them insane preference for their own App Store on all Apple computers.

Imagine what sort of system-level settings you'd have to change on macOS today if you wanted to ship a competing macOS App Store on Apple devices with UX similar to Apple's own, but without Apple signing keys.

You'd basically have to write some malware-style code to get inside of Gatekeeper and privilege your downloaded/purchased apps the same way Apple does for apps from their own App Store.

How long do you think they would let this stand before trying to whack your installer daemon with XProtect for posing "danger to profit integrity"? (They'd spell "profit" as "system", though.)