I never said to recompile everything, just specific things. You don’t need to rebuild your kernel, libc, compiler, and so on to compile Chromium.
Snap is not the same as macOS apps. But macOS apps are self-contained statically linked apps most of which don’t hook into centralized updating services. Yet macOS is more usable than Ubuntu (I say this as someone who desperately wishes the reverse was true). macOS apps have more in common with snap apps than with dynamically linked .deb packages.
Conversely I have used a variety of app store interfaces on various linux distros that were quite usable and pleasant with search functions that actually worked.
Here for example is a relatively recent video showing installing software via the Linux Mint Software GUI
There are multiple gui frontends for apt. Are we disingenuously pretending this isn't so?
> Compile from scratch
On a lot of laptops this would be 24 hours of straight building which would have to be redone when underlying libraries changed. This would further be non obvious until after an update your browser didn't open. Furthermore the setup for building it would be apt pun intended to be at least slightly complicated and errors caused by lack of say the needed dev packages would be non obvious and confusing to regular users. Pretending this is a reasonable alternative is of dubious value.
The browser is the single most important application on most users computer. Syncing it by itself and the users profile, settings, bookmarks, and passwords restores much of what the user expects from their computer. Providing no obvious way to install it without learning about ppas and wading through tons of out of date ppas to figure out the correct one that works with your system is non obvious, non discoverable and frustrating. Virtually all new users will end up with the snap version and thinking linux is just slow.
>guess how Chrome is packaged and installed there
Methodologies for packaging have different attributes and downsides Snap != Mac OS