What changed is that Apple made the masses familiar with the concept of installing software only from a store with a vetting process. For short, the walled garden. That was mostly an alien thing in the world of software. All of us grew with the possibility of getting an installer and install it whenever we wanted. There were some form of protections against piracy but nothing else.

Once Apple created the walled garden every other company realized how good it could be for their bottom lines and attempted to do the same thing.

So, to answer your question, Microsoft got blamed for viruses and made fun of but there wasn't a better way in the mainstream. There is one now.

PCs will resist this trend for a while because it's also mainstream that they are used to do work. Many people use a PC every day with some native application from a company they have a direct contract with. For example: accounting software. Everybody can add another example from their own experience. Those programs don't come from the Windows store and it will be a long term effort to gatekeep everything into the store or move them into a web browser.

The .NET MAUI technology we had a post about yesterday is one of the bricks that can build the transition.