Well, it's the problem for maybe 1% of developers (to pull a "sufficiently tiny to make my point, but still made up" number out of thin air). There is still plenty of money to be made that doesn't conflict with the default functionality of the iPhone.
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather there was no filtering at all and there was instead a sort of "paid apps have the option of getting Apple Certification and being listed at the top of all lists" option instead, but I don't think the App Store problems outweigh the benefits for users.
As the adage goes, "The plural of anecdote is not data."
Neither you nor your parent have any statistical basis for your estimates. As of early this month [1], there are over 100,000 applications in the app store. If 1% were rejected, that means that 1,010 apps were rejected. Your two apps could easily fall into that category.
Basically, all we can know is that many apps get accepted, but not all of them do. Any more clarity than that requires Apple's intervention (which I don't expect to see any time soon).
It may not be when you consider the large number of low-quality but harmless games and distractions out there. It's when you try to do something interesting - to push what the device can do that you run a high risk of not being approved.
