Having ridden this stuff myself, albeit short-term tests only, I disagree with the statement that it "doesn't do anything better." The shifting performance under load is impressive, far better than Eagle, and it does also offer 1 extra cog of range. It also seems less sensitive to getting knocked around, the Eagle derailleur is notoriously finicky to set up and will start having trouble with shifts once it gets a bit beat up.

There was less of an outcry, because at the time, people were still on the fence about the whole 1x thing to start with. SRAM did only roll out the license to a select few manufacturers to start with, but it opened it up fairly quickly after that (note that the XD Driver is an open and free of charge standard these days, while the XD cassette is not - companies have to pay a license fee if they want to manufacture XD-compatible cassettes, to the best of my knowledge).

When SRAM 1x11 first came out, the XD driver was all-new too, yet that drivetrain was widely praised and credited with ushering in the mass adaptation of the 1x transmission in the MTB world at large. No doubt we'd have much preferred to see wider licensing of the MicroSpline standard right off the bat, but we have little doubt it's going to happen. And the trickle-down has also already started with the recent introduction of the new XT group, which delivers pretty much all of the XTR benefits and performance at a lower cost.

This spring was MADE to enable linear designs to function with a coil shock. However, it's only available in a 75mm stroke version, so it won't work with your bike.