Back then they had the important property, which is what is at issue above, of having known provenance. We knew whence we got them.

The relevant thing here isn't the naff quality of the supposed utilities, but the fact that there's such a plethora of that kind of stuff for malwares to masquerade as. The better analogy to the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s would be that people were impersonating legitimate sharewares back then, even getting onto cover-discs, just as they impersonate legitimate "store apps" now.

The point being (badly and prejudicially) made it seems is that the next step is impersonating legitimate "app stores".

At which point, cue "app store" analogues of all of the Linux-based operating system people and the well-trodden perennial arguments over "contrib" and "UR" and suchlike package repositories, from I'm-safe-I'll-only-use-the-official-app-store to why-should-I-trust-any-store-above-the-original-author.

You really didn't know, as they were full of shareware and public domain, coming from who knows where.