while that's true, apple would never have been able to create an appstore with mostly 99¢ (and free) apps if they charged the adc premier dev price.
that being said, i still believe apple should be charging $99/binary instead, which would end (or severely limit) junk apps and junk app farms which clog up the app store and account for lengthy approval time. in addition, a $25 - $50 fee to submit an update, which would put an end (or severely limit) developers who for some reason feel the need to update their apps every 2 weeks rather than originally submitting something more complete.
i think this way apple could still retain their low tier pricing scheme, the appstore would be a better place with little junk, and developers would feel less alienated during the approval process.
A fee to submit apps is an interesting idea. I wouldn't have a problem with it if it meant better service. Though I don't think it should be so high for free ones. (maybe $15-20 for free ones, $99 for paid ones)
Charging to submit updates is a bad idea. It would discourage smaller devs from releasing updates to fix non-critical bugs. Instead, I think they should reconsider putting updates in the new release list, and instead have a separate "newly updated" list.