Apple are one of the biggest offenders of "Don't you dare do what you want with your device. We'll tell you what you want to do"
Unfortunately now OSX is going in the same direction of the users not owning their hardware/software as with iOS. And many users get sucked into it because it looks pretty
It's because they use a custom installer that dumps code all over the filesystem that makes Adobe apps are difficult to uninstall.
FUD.
The only restrictions on MacOS are reasonable defaults to prevent unsigned, non-app-store programs from running. Given that there are many more users like my 80 year old mother than there HN-types, this is FINE, since those settings are easy to turn off.
Windows, btw, does the same thing on home versions -- except its "S Mode" is WAY more fiddly to get rid of, and once turned off cannot be turned back on.
macOS is nothing like iOS WRT apps you can install and run.
Turning off Gatekeeper is literally a single terminal command. (sudo spctl --master-disable)
Again, just my personal opinion.