Apple fucked this up, but I really don't think the situation is "as bad if not worse" than if MacOS just didn't do this.
That's the world we live in now thanks to Google and Mozilla.
It's also worth remembering that both of these specific organizations were instrumental in major, positive security shifts that eventually hit OS's too, including shorter-lived certs, limiting the point of CAs, adoption of TLS 1.3, and likely other things. If anything, they deserve _more_ trust than the OS distributors on this specific front, perhaps also because they don't share the OS distributor's incentive to prioritize stability for paying customers, which can be at odds at times with harsh, prompt security measures.
But this abstract exercise is only to highlight the importance of Apple getting its shit together, because such a scenario exists with Windows and the culture of downloading exes and msis and it's honestly way worse than having a central but responsible authority.