Spam, propaganda, and not true.
"While I know that there are thousands of apps you can buy for your iPhone/iPod touch, I've never actually met anyone who's ever bought one."
Did you forget about 1 Billion+ App downloads? Sure, a large portion of them are free. Those free apps can make money with ads+incentives for a freemium upgrade to the "Pro" version. Yes, Apple is harsh with developers. Yes, the iPhone app game is way harder than it seems. I'd rather deal with Apple's process as a small dev, than dealing with carriers and their nonsense. Do they even want to deal with someone making a game on the weekend for fun? Probably not. GTFO and don't come back.