vten

US doesn't include VAT on their price tags if I'm correct.

If one can afford it then why not? It's everywhere, not just gadget industry. People buy new models of premium cars when they come out, people buy a new pair of $600 shoes when new collection arrives. Those people don't quite fit to your description of a common Starbucks customer.

Well, programmers are humans too and humans (mostly) like beautiful stuff, so there's a valid point in ruby being better at attracting and get people involved than Python does.

Having worked with both, this beauty thing also applies to library APIs. I found ruby libraries to have a lot more syntax sugar and better 'plug-and-playability' than Python tools. Ruby is just more fun.