I almost never go to the app store to find an app, but I can understand how that would be really frustrating. Sounds like they need to get serious about curating the app store content.

From my perspective, the walled garden value I get is predominantly in the integrations between my phone, macbook, and watch. And to a lesser extent (because it's a bit buggy at times) the family integrations.

Integrations makes sense, but I'm 100% sold on linux/PCs at this point and I don't care about wearables so my phone is just a phone. Luckily I'm not on the app store much, but if the walled garden is a cesspool already then maybe opening the gates a bit isn't such a bad idea.