I'm the author of the blog post linked here. Thanks for the interest and thoughtful replies.
I certainly have complaints about the dev process Apple has created but I stand by my statement that Apple has allowed me to connect to more potential customers than ever was possible before.
The web has been available to the average person for 10-15 years but that doesn't mean I would have been able to get those people to look at my product. If I held a yard sale I can't realistically say that I have a potential market of all 600k people in Baltimore. Maybe I put up signs around my neighborhood, a small number of people see them and an even smaller number go out of their way to see what I'm selling.
But if I'm given a shop in the high traffic inner harbor, I have access to vastly more people who will already be drawn to the area and happen to see my wares. And even better, that shop in the high traffic area is decorated nicely and already set up with a credit card processing system. All I need to do is line the shelves with product.
I'll stop before I carry the analogy to the point of silliness, but for me to succeed without the App Store would have taken a different kind of product, more infrastructure and a lot more time spent on the things I don't know how to do. Despite theoretical potential, I never would have made it happen. The App Store significantly lowers the barrier to entry.
When I started as a software developer I dreamed of having a product on the shelves at Babbages and CompUSA. I feel I've finally achieved the modern equivalent of that. I would not have been able to make that happen without the ecosystem Apple has set up.