Fair enough. My claim was from September 2016, predicting that it will never work well in the future (and the UX problems I highlighted were from 2010 onwards.) I think it was pretty obvious that the app will need to be unbundled (about an year after my post, Apple started removing some features from iTunes like the iOS App store).

I'm sure people liked it in 2004 (although I never was blown away by it.) Also the fact that it was the #1 store can reflect music distribution agreements (and the success of iPod/iPhone) more than its prowess as a product.