Hello Paul, Inbal and Wes,
thanks for your post and sorry for the delayed response. Great to see that there is interest in the tool.
Our official line on when we release the authoring tool is 'before the end of 2014' as per our roadmap page. We're not really in a position to set a specific date and would rather avoid any disappointment, hence we're keeping it quite vague.
It's also important to say that our first release will be a functional prototype (i.e. a version 0.1 rather than a fully built out version 1.0). The requirements we are aiming to meet can be seen here. This functional prototype will be usable and stable and best suited to early adopters. There may still be a few technical skills required on occasion...
Hope this explains things.
Thanks and have a great week,
Sven