For non-student/non-academics that just want to try it out and see if it works for them, it is a very steep price to pay. I strongly support paying for the tools you use, but $200 for a feet-first dive is steep.

That's one of the reasons I like Xamarin's approach with MonoTouch. You can use it and target the Simulator for free, but if you want to run your app on the device, you need to pay for a license. Seems fair to me. I wish RubyMotion would offer this as well. I bet a lot of developers (myself included) would then try it out. But like purephase, I can't justify paying $200 just to try something out.