It's a labor camp where people are making money.
Go back to the day to app stores like getjar. Did you even know they existed? Did you know how people bought and sold software before app stores? Did you know how developers did?
I do, and it was expensive to sell. The app store led the way to what is almost a zero-cost way to sell your software. You didn't have to provide a few thousand copies of your software as "payment." You didn't have to print a box, manual, and make physical media.
Saying the app store and its execution weren't a great revolution shows that you are totally ignorant of how software was made and sold only a few years ago. Small developers for software really didn't exist. Nobody pays for shareware, and making a living as a small dev was basically impossible. The app store basically recreated the hobby developer market, period, and brought it to a level of mainstream that was never attained by normal PCs.
Better PR? Apple does have better PR. But Apple also does things that nobody else things will work, and makes it work well. Making something work well is substantially harder than you can imagine.