> There's no transparency or real studies if there's some effective malware filtering by forcing the app store model so at this point it's difficult to take it seriously.

Maybe look at the Android situation: Malware is at least two orders of magnitude more prevalent, and it's mostly because you can type "free fortnite vbucks android" into the search bar, get on a YT video that links to a shady site, that shady site tells the user how to enable sideloading and install spyware apps masquerading as coin generators.

You don't need to go that far to get spyware, they are already available on the play store if you look enough