> many trackers

A native app has access to OS information for the same kind of fingerprinting as with browsers, except with more bits of information. The reason, for example, iOS has the “ask app not to track” button is because the tracking could still happen, even more comprehensively than in a browser. Not exactly sure about macOS but I don’t see why it would be different.

Meta is keeping their apps as native presumably because native apps make better spyware. I think they literally do not have any other reason; if web apps made better spyware, Meta would push people to use their web apps, simple as. Meta is a spyware company. Technical decisions about deploying/developing their spyware will be informed primarily by their desire to make it more effective as such.

Most apps on Mac are not on the App Store

You download a DMG file or something, then you drag and drop some icon into your “applications” folder

It is kind of dumb. I haven’t seen any graphical package manage interface to handle this.

The App Store is the graphical package manager interface. Or in the case of apps that haven't published, the Finder/Applications folder itself. It makes a lot of sense, similar to the way GoboLinux stashed packages in its new world filesystem hierarchy. One folder, one package.

You do not need a new filesystem hierarchy for it. I have a "one folder one package" kind of setup (among others), e.g. packages are at ~/.local/pkg and I have them symlinked from there to ~/.local. It works for many programs. I use "zpkg", but you could use "GNU stow", too.

new to mac and when i dis this the first time i was "wtf is this made for children"

but I understand more. Its more a folder oriented system. kind of

Its fine, it just has the quirk that sharing folders sucks and you have to put it in a container so it’s a single file.