Let me just drop this link: http://macincloud.com/ ...you could totally use the iOS simulator, or compile the .ipa(iOS app binary) and send it to yourself via testflight or even faster, on a jailbroken device, just FTP/scp/whatever the .ipa to your physical location and install it on your device. But yeah, other than this cloud solution I completely agree on the price-of-entry point. Considering the salaries we're getting these days, allocating $1,000 for an iOS device and a macmini doesn't seem unreasonable. Around $1,600 if you need a macbook. That's how Apple rolls. Take it or leave it. If you're just wanting to learn to hack around with things, or just can't afford Apple hardware right now, then sure... hack around with OSX on non-Apple hardware. But if you're a professional paid engineer and serious about app development, dealing with this hack'ish OSX environment is a waste of time. Just by a macmini or sign up with macincloud. Spend your time developing your app, not pulling your hair out on whatever brokeness of OSX-on-NonApple-hardware you'll encounter.

When I'm fixing a bug in a piece of open source software reported by a user running it on a Mac, my inclination to actually pay money to fix that bug hovers around zero.

That's kinda like saying the obvious choice is not to build for Windows, because you have to have Windows to run Windows development tools.

Or not to build for Linux because you have to buy a linux machine.

How can you say they do? They don't. Therefore, you have to buy a mac.

That kind of consideration is synonymous with "give us more money" in my book. For developers who are willing to develop for iOS but don't use Macs, why not give them a bone and let them develop on a VM? Apple still makes money if the app sells.