That’s a false dichotomy. Preventing absolutely every piece of malware would be great, but merely preventing very nearly every piece of malware is also nice. You only have to compare Google’s and Apple’s stores to see that Apple’s approach is more effective (not much), though clearly not perfect. (Apple had the ability to remotely pull malware right from the beginning, clearly showing that they never believed the review process to be perfect in preventing malware.)
Whether that trade-off is worth it is a completely different question (I think it is not – Apple should allow users to install whatever they want, they can even make enabling that needlessly complicated, but they should allow it.) but if you are immediately jumping to the conclusion that Apple’s curated approach is devoid of value because one piece of malware made it through your analysis of the situation is lacking and populist.
This is a good rebuttal, but it remains to be seen whether Apple can actually prevent "nearly every piece of malware" from getting through. To be quite honest, I'm not even the slightest bit familiar with their review and approval process, but I have difficulty believing it can continue to scale without introducing security holes.
Whether that trade-off is worth it is a completely different question (I think it is not – Apple should allow users to install whatever they want, they can even make enabling that needlessly complicated, but they should allow it.) but if you are immediately jumping to the conclusion that Apple’s curated approach is devoid of value because one piece of malware made it through your analysis of the situation is lacking and populist.