AFAIK xapk is not proprietary to APKpure and its safe. Its just a way to ease the installation of packages that require additional data (OBB) not contained in the apk to run. If you installed the same app from APKMirror (as an plain apk) you would need to then hunt for the obb files and “install” them manually for it to run. Packages that dont require this additional data are distributed as plain apk’s in APKpure, its only those that do that come in xapk format.

As for the sketchy installers, I’ve seen a couple of them and they suck, I agree. Fortunatelly I discovered the other day that an app called ZArchiver (a file browser developed mainly to manage compressed files) can install xapk’s without problem, its a quite competent file browser and its free, without ads.

Now if you still dont trust them you can try with the sites listed in FMHY

Edit: Just remembered a site called apk.support They too use xapk but they also offer downloads as zip files containig both apk and data or the option to download them separately directly from google servers. I’ve used it a couple of times without issues.

However, had we not brought them over here, it’s a good possibility they would still be running from lions.

This is not factual, this is willfully ignorant.

The mechanical drive is 70% cheaper per TB than the solid one. Thats more than “slightly better” in my book.