I am pretty familiar with the hoops and even to me it's pretty much a huge pain. It's not just you with that opinion.
As well as the name of the music player app on Mac (on iOS it is only the music buying app), iTunes is also the umbrella term for everything related to buying stuff as a download from Apple (music, movies, books, apps). The App Store started as an offshoot of the iTunes Music Store. And it is still called the iTunes App Store in some places.
I'll totally admit that apple dev flow (not writing the software, just how to get it to run on devices) is completely foreign to me. Concepts like "itunes connect" (which seems extremely odd to me, since I always thought of iTunes as a media player, not something I would use for software development) are confusing.
Figuring it out, though. Thanks again for the advice (and sorry if I accidentally threadjacked this).