The gear is completely irrelevant. They blew two hundred thousand dollars. How much of that went on gear, a tenth? That's down in the noise. Forget about it. The real expense was the other nine tenths, which presumably went on living expenses, representing the value of time. (Underrepresenting at that. You can always replace money. You can't replace time.)
The real lesson here is: time is precious. Don't blow it in large quantities unless there's going to be something a lot more worthwhile than "apps" to show for it.
I'm going to assume that the $200k number mentioned in the article refers to lost opportunity cost (compared to having a normal software job), and not that they actually spent $200k in a two year timespan when they had no other income.
The real lesson here is: time is precious. Don't blow it in large quantities unless there's going to be something a lot more worthwhile than "apps" to show for it.