I don't think that's a very good comparison. A project in the Mac world begins and ends its life as a .app. This effort by Apple means that the vast majority of users will only see "approved" software. In the Linux world, most software begins as a .tgz, and earns packagers as it becomes more popular.
There are only a few things really keeping a package out of the main Debain repositories: Being "non-free" (which takes it out of "main"), being clearly malicious, and not attracting enough interest to have a maintainer/packager.
I think we've seen with the iPhone that Apple has very, very different criteria. Further, Debian hosts something in the ballpark of 20,000 packages: I seriously doubt we'll ever see such diversity for the Mac, especially with their developer fees.
The other force driving me away is their refusal to accept GPL3 software. I don't like having to build things myself that every Linux distribution provides so easily.
Well, it's down to who decides that an app is trustworthy. In the open source world, this is done through vetting by the community, whereas in Apple's case they can afford to hire people to do it. I agree that the community approach is likely to be better, but I don't think the Apple approach is inherently evil, just inefficient.
The stated goals of Apple for gatekeeping apps are practically the same as signing packages in the distros: To protect unwary users from installing malicious or broken applications. I think that's a worthy goal.
There are only a few things really keeping a package out of the main Debain repositories: Being "non-free" (which takes it out of "main"), being clearly malicious, and not attracting enough interest to have a maintainer/packager.
I think we've seen with the iPhone that Apple has very, very different criteria. Further, Debian hosts something in the ballpark of 20,000 packages: I seriously doubt we'll ever see such diversity for the Mac, especially with their developer fees.
The other force driving me away is their refusal to accept GPL3 software. I don't like having to build things myself that every Linux distribution provides so easily.