I have also heard the engineers are very passionate. Unfortunately, I have also heard that they have little to no say as to what new features go into the next version. So the real question is are the marketers and product managers as passionate as the engineers in listening to their core customers and improving the product as per their wishes?
Span columns is a huge feature and I know a ton of work has been put into it the last few versions. But other than that the new print features have been minor. I think a lot of the core customers would like to see at best an equal amount of print features as digital.