Huh, looks like Ubuntu MATE is going with a new "Software Boutique" application.

After using the crap software store on vanilla Ubuntu and the Gnome Boutique or whatever it was called that they replaced it with, can't say I'm thrilled.

This is worrying from the feature list too: "Curated collection of apps will be loaded from an external database", which to me says "it's likely a lot of things you want won't be here and you have to start Synaptic anyway".