There are still FREE alternate versions of every great Mac App/Utility out there, made by great developers, and won’t track you or charge you a subscription, just like the glory 32 bit days. 
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Does a 2015 MacBook Pro still cut it in 2024?
- Thread starter rwh63
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And the only way to get them now (aside from Terminal hijinks or bittorrent swashbuckling) is to be logged into an Apple ID account (because otherwise the AppStore, which is the only source of this ostensibly great stuff, will play dumb) where you'll be tracked that way. I.e., just like Microsoft wanting you to be logged into an their account all the time. All in the name of gaslit "security", to be sure.There are still FREE alternate versions of every great Mac App/Utility out there, made by great developers, and won’t track you or charge you a subscription, just like the glory 32 bit days.
Wait, are you trying to say here that the only way to install an app is through the App Store? I mean maybe the particular apps you’re thinking of, but I loaded an app without the App Store last month, it was free, and extremely useful.
The average user* no longer knows how to "load" an app from anyplace but the App Store, and Apple goes out of its way to keep them ignorant. (The average user certainly won't know how to Terminal hack to reenable running apps downloaded "From anywhere".) All the EvilBigTech OEMs now want you viewing your computers as a fat smartphone with the same approach to software. Indeed, even the idea that you own your own computer (and should actively thwart the OEM from psuedo-bricking via sluggified software-"update" down the road) is ebbing. "Automatic update" is default everywhere now, and the average user sufficiently panicked to think it's a good idea (the tribulations of Windows users notwithstanding).
(*I consider "average" that broad mass of Mac users who don't know how to reenable their drive icons appearing on the desktop, or reenabling permanent scrollbars in desktop windows (both used to be default a dozen years ago). By ration of machines I look at as I service them or pick them up at recyclers, this is well over 90%. --If you have even one tweak of any type to your OS other than changing the background pic, you're in the 5% minority. Probably no more than 10% of Mac-owners have a portable drive either, and 0.01% know how to create a bootable backup of the OS.)
I think the average user can be guided through the fairly standard open dmg + drag to Applications process. But yeah, asking them to command line install things with homebrew is likely not viable for most users.
Going to a website like https://calibre-ebook.com/
clicking download, and following the instructions there is perhaps a challenge for the most computer phobic or illiterate, but it in no means is indication that it’s impossible to find outside of the App Store. To quote you above, “And the only way to get them now…”
Nope, simply not true. Do some apps require jumping through unnecessary hoops that prevent the average user? Absolutely. Should they? I don’t think so. Is the App Store the best idea? Well, it’s great for apple’s pockets not ours.
Screw "instructions". --You know why? Sure: smart people like you and me can solve these problems (and be occasionally smug enough to insult the overwhelming majority of Mac-users behind their backs for their ignorant impertinence at attempting productive work with their finite lifespans instead of playing unfwack-the-OS puzzlerush with sufficient aplomb such that we up-our-sleeves sneering intellectuals no longer contemplate them with utter disdain), but virtually no one else I deal with in a professional capacity can. Scavenger-hunt booty like this merely enables forum detractors to gamma-sperg "A-ha! You are wrong! The MacOS is not yet a total walled-garden!"
You found a headless-clown corner-case! Good for you! My claim is now only 99% true.
It's great for the population-tracking intelligence-entities hosting all of EvilBigTech as myriad fronts all implementing its agenda to have everyone logged into an account 24/7, ideally one with location-services enabled, and to store all of their personal stuff on cloud-servers. Tis fer sure.
It should be noted that this is an officially-supported procedure. I.e., Apple doesn't actively thwart anyone from opening a compressed archive to drag the contents a half-inch to an Application folder alias inside the dmg's mounted window. (It will actively thwart the user from launching that app if its creator did not properly genuflect at the altar of the AppStore.)