I think there's a disproportionate amount of beginner's material that involves the use of storyboarding and Interface Builder, which gives the impression that iOS development is a lot like it is in Visual Basic.
Perhaps other iOS developers can weigh in on this, but I feel like it's fair to say that the most qualified developers do everything programmatically.
I've been doing everything exclusively programmatically since I've started, and I've never had any problems with XCode - to the point where I was surprised when I heard people complain about it for the first time.
From that point, the only downside I see to using Objective-C over Ruby is verbosity, but that seems pretty inconsequential given some of the benefits sandofsky mentioned above.
It's nice that there's something out there for experienced Ruby developers though.
Perhaps other iOS developers can weigh in on this, but I feel like it's fair to say that the most qualified developers do everything programmatically.
I've been doing everything exclusively programmatically since I've started, and I've never had any problems with XCode - to the point where I was surprised when I heard people complain about it for the first time.
From that point, the only downside I see to using Objective-C over Ruby is verbosity, but that seems pretty inconsequential given some of the benefits sandofsky mentioned above.
It's nice that there's something out there for experienced Ruby developers though.