As a power user myself, and the free tech guy for a family of casual users, I totally agree with this approach.

An application for power users doesn't just have a few advanced features or configuration switches. It has to be fully designed with different goals in mind.

Ease of learning vs efficiency, non-intimidating UI vs configurability, prettiness vs speed of usage; they're often at odds with each other, and while I'm sure some great examples of applications sitting comfortably in the fence can be found, most end up as a shitty experience for everyone.