Neal Stephenson, I love his work. I accidentally fell into seveneves, while that has it's problems, especially near the end, I absolutely devoured it. from there I just started reading all his stuff. Such a cool way to integrate science with story telling.
My perception with stuff like this has always been. Microsoft testing it out in the environment it's going to be used, and with expert supervision. Then after a couple of versions, normal users can get a solid version. I have seen this happen with Visual Studio and resounding tools.