Erel,
You are quite right: but it helps to be able to run the apple on a real device (eg: to get the GPS location, which the simulator does not seem to 'fake', or use the camera or ...)
What do you mean with "limitations to the app itself" ? Do you know of things that do not work ?
So true about an Apple developer account, but I think for a lot of us the fact you can run an app on your own device without needing to pay Apple 99$/year initially (to start developing with b4i) is very interesting (at least for me it was).