Awful search, awful review system, confusing interface and.. that's it? I don't see how the app store even compares.

Biggest piece of the puzzle is there is no alternative. You are 100% forced to use the app store.

No one forces you to use steam. There is generally always another way to buy a PC game, and if a developer chose to put it only on steam.. well, then that's the developer's fault and not steam's fault (I get that steam is mostly a monopoly on PC, so that's not entirely fair to say, but still.. the developer can always just throw their game on GOG or itch.io etc easy enough).

So Apple's entire store is built upon forcing you to go put your product there, offering no alternatives, and then taking a large cut. Not to mention almost the entire mobile market is a hot piece of trash creating apps/games that are only there to suck up your money in microtransactions/ads or whatever. And Apple encourages that because they want the cut of all the bullshit money they pull out of people.

Steam doesn't do that. Sure you can find some little garbage people put on there, but that's few and far between and not the norm- I pretty much never see that on my daily use.

Steam still operates in a way that provides a great platform for people who love to make games and people who love to play games.

Any comparison to the mobile market of ios/android is entirely disengenious.