However, I wish they would change the fundamentals a bit more to make it more developer friendly and encourage better testing, and more creativity

Better testing : to get you app tested, developers need to secure UDIDs from beta testers. This is very difficult, and as a results skews your testers to the more techy crowd. You can use apps to get UDID off of phones (Ad Hoc Helper, Nextive), but it's still too difficult/expensive. If Apple made it easier, you'd get more apps tested by their target demographic, get more feedback, and the app would be less buggy in the first version that goes submitted. That would help get rid of the silly errors that clog the Apple review process. How about a simple, beta-code generator that you email to say, where anyone receiving it can test your app? Apple could impose the same 100-testers per year limit as they do now.

More creativity needs to be at the focus of Apple app store. With the push to getting bigger brands involved, I worry about the small developer who has a great idea but doesn't have the $$ to stay in the game. If Apple doesn't help these developers market their app, it's a total loss, as marketing amidst 100k apps is difficult and expensive. My recommendation is that Apple waive its 30% revenue share UNTIL the app has generated $10k in total revenue. That way Apple has the incentive to promote/find ways to get users to find the new apps — if they don't then Apple doesn't make any money until the developer has made some. May not cover the app developer's time spent, but at least you aren't robbing precious dollars, while not providing any help. If Apple helps with marketing/discovery, then the 30% is worth it. Let's align the incentives here.

I'm certain the authors would appreciate the effort.

But hey if your stealing personal information from the user's iPhone than F u and you should be black listed