No it was just continuing the status quo. Apple explicitly said they used Valve's Steam as a reference for monetizing a digital app store.
As far as mobile app stores went Valve's model wasn't the status quo. However, Valve showed that what they were doing was working.
You could run whatever apps you wanted on phones.
Nope, on J2ME and Symbian phones, unless you had a developer kit, you would run what the telecom provider made available on their stores, reachable via WAP or SMS download links.