They are not very inconsistent with rules. I have 24 apps on the appstore and the ones that were rejected and later accepted were consistent with the policies aggregated here: http://appreview.tumblr.com/

I am upset because apple rejected google voice but so far I haven't seen anything which was rejected and was not on the list in the link.

Moreover, apple does have an appeal process. Once the app gets rejected they ask you to make changes, and resubmit the app.

There are definitely things that apple can do to improve the process for example, they should definitely get rid of changing the availability date with updates because a lot of developers just keep on posting updates with no real updates to be on the new release list. Check McPhun for example and they are actually able to keep themselves in top 10 for the past 6 months just because they have an update every week. But other than these minor issues which I am pretty sure apple will solve, there are a lot of good things going with it, which people tend to ignore.