To be clear, what you mean by "having an app store" is "reverting 40 years of established software usage best practice and downgrade to dictatorial way where a central company can control everything".
Words have power. "App store" sounds up-beat, friendly and inclusive. But the rules behind what Apple has established that "App store" actually means are anything but.
Apple didn't invent the app store and weren't many mobile phones before the iPhone (running J2ME or whatever) even more restrictive?
Also, Android doesn't restrict side-loading in this way so I disagree that restricting side-loading is an essential feature of an app store as commonly understood.
No, phones before the iPhone running J2ME had side-loading. Some carrier turned that off, but if you bought directly from the manufacturers you got a phone that you could control and do anything with by yourself, without any third party stopping you. Manufacturers felt confident that their J2ME sandboxing stopped apps from doing anything evil.
I feel like you didn't really answer my point, though. I criticize you for using an upbeat word to make a dictatorial system sound good. And you counter by talking about something entirely else, word definition and word history.
Words have power. "App store" sounds up-beat, friendly and inclusive. But the rules behind what Apple has established that "App store" actually means are anything but.