"Scientific wonder or alarming development?"
Neither. No wonder; they proved a hypothesis thus taking away such notions of alarming development.
The media portray a summarised (badly) account of what is obviously a much much larger and more complex affair. In such a short article it is impossible to convery enough information to gain contex. Since we cannot get contex the information given lacks depth. Things like pricing are irrelevant in the greater contex of GM crops. Everything starts off expensive, that pays for R&D (which means get it wrong lots and lots are charge the end user for it!). It's just a stage of development. Things get cheaper.
You must always think about what aspect of the food has been modified. For instance an enhanced apple may be more nutrious but crop yield stays the same - scientists may not be able to achieve a modification to give greater yeilds and nutrition. Consider such things when some unknown is telling wild worst case futures about some highly GM'd superfood.
There is this most untrue notion (again created mostly by the media) that nature is best and safe. I challenge anyone to survive in nature for 1 week. You will find that there is lots that can kill you or at least make your experience unpleasant. So why do 'we' think that something crafted by science is going to be or turn out so bad ultimately? As for not kowing what the future holds regarding consumption of GM foods, the same can be said of many natural foods. We take dairy milk as a given in life; we need it. How natural is drinking another mammals breast milk? Yes it provides things like Calcium but there are ample ways to gain a good dose of Calcium (scientific and otherwise).
Please for the extension of mankind allow science to understand the finer points of the genetic engineering of foods. Think twice before you stifle such technology its infancy based on unfounded portrayal worst case scenarios.
The world needs new technology - this is such.