Apple's App Store is a logical result of the chaos that's been exhibited on general purpose computing platforms for the last 20 years.
When end users experience crashes, blue screens, data corruptions, poor user interfaces, hung devices, and insufficient functionality, they are not "feeling their freedom". They are feeling the results of you exercising yours. And when their "local nerd" is asking them questions which leadingly suggest that they shouldn't have been doing what they've been doing, they feel angry.
End users want computing like they want toast. Put in their bread/data, push a button, and get their toast/video. The fact that this is very hard, and in some cases virtually impossible, does nothing to limit the end users' expectations. For years they have been told these computers will make their lives better and enable them in so many ways -- which they have, but they sure don't like the hidden costs that these ecosystems have dumped on them.
You know all those arguments that have been made? If you don't like it, you don't have to use it! That's all the end user is doing.
Sturgeon's Law explains that 90% of anything is crap. If curation -- in the form of App Stores or whatever -- can change those odds, even just a little bit, end users are going to move towards them in droves.
Software engineers have squandered their freedom, and end users are increasingly acting like they don't want to have any part of it any more.
(I wrote up a much longer article on the same theme.)