I'm not sure I understand your point. You're saying that channels are like apt/sources.list or yum.repos.d, and flakes are like the Apple App Store? Or the other way around?
One thing that probably didn't help my understanding of channels was that I run Nix on non-NixOS systems (primarily MacOS and Fedora). If I'd stuck to NixOS, then thinking of a channel in the same terms as apt/sources.list or yum.repos.d would have been an easier mental model.
One thing that probably didn't help my understanding of channels was that I run Nix on non-NixOS systems (primarily MacOS and Fedora). If I'd stuck to NixOS, then thinking of a channel in the same terms as apt/sources.list or yum.repos.d would have been an easier mental model.