Spotted in the recent announcement of PIXEL for x86, looks like the Raspberry Pi Foundation now recommends Etcher to burn system disks. 
It looks like it is the exact fit to the purpose originally imagined (among other design aims): a cross-platform SD card / USB writer, so there can be a single set of instructions for tutorial and how-to writers, no more “If you use Linux, then… If you use Windows, then…” sections. 
Cheers!