But even at $695 it's a bargain because you get tried and trusted code and you can focus on the application-specific aspects. Just how much 'framework' could you develop for $695? ;-)

Of course, frameworks require require you to do everything their way and it can be insanely hard, if not downright impossible, to make apps built with them behave differently. That is why so many Delphi/MFC apps have a mediocre/sloppy feel - unfortunate choices at the framework level propagate into every app using the framework and correcting such issues in application code can be difficult and time-consuming (read: prohibitively expensive).