@nirgrahamuk: you are right. My use case was just study.
I was always having trouble with the 'gather' and 'spread' and this morning I was following some 'tidyr' lessons by Jane Wall. After lesson 2 about pivot_wider and pivot_longer I felt equipped to tackle the 'spec' versions. Apparently not ready yet 
But enough to feel inspired to study more. I also installed the pivot vignette from the development version on github. I am not sure if it is already available in the production version. A lot of nice examples!
Study continues.