> - Rustle around for PayPal password. Why not just provide a .dmg?
> - +4 minutes, finally get App Store working. Download.
This seems to be more a complaint about your operating system than the app.
I gave Winds 2.0 a look last week and had the same experience. It took like 5 minutes just to get a download link and it takes me to the App Store where I have to sign-in (after signing in to LastPass and pulling out my phone for 2FA). Then I finally get it installed and immediately get asked to register for yet another account.
It's a pretty app, but the install process was terrible and it's honestly not a great RSS reader. It's a worse version of Flipboard with somehow less control over the content you see.
Is this true if you're a developer? I've stayed away from macs because you need xcode to get any sort of dev tools and xcode is only available on the App store (at least this was the case the last time I tried to develop on a mac).
Also there are a few other IDEs that do their own thing, it's objective-c and that's a language with multiple implementations (though one overwhelmingly popular one, obv). E.g. AppCode has been around for a while: https://www.jetbrains.com/objc/