This is a good conversation on kilns. One thing I noticed in the kiln drying article was a lack of discussion of drying temperature. I've always steered clear of building a heated kiln, opting for the dehumidifier in a closed room version. I'll give some of my reservations—just for the sake of being aware of them for those who do use kilns.
Working in shipyards in my 20s and 30s, I was around a lot of very talented old-school shipwrights, and I've yet to ever meet a shipwright who has anything good to say about kiln dried wood. Granted, a marine environment is VERY different from that of a home. Here's the shipwights' objection. In heating wood (I think the temperature cut-off is around 120+) the natural enzymes are killed. As with boiling wood, if kiln drying is done too fast, the cell walls also rupture. In a marine environment, kiln dried wood rots very quickly, probably due to the loss of natural enzymes that keeps wood still "alive"—so to speak. I've seen beautiful work come back into the shipyard rotten for no reason other than kiln drying of the wood. At the extreme end of heat, amazing doug fir came out of the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption, and a lot of the working fleet had repairs that came back a few years later with all of the new replaced planking rotting.
I've ordered kiln dried lumber from a number of different mills, and while the quality control may have been so-so in some of the more local mills, I swear I can feel a difference in how the wood cuts, especially with handtools. I've heard the same from a number of furniture makers. My take away for us woodturners is that I'd want to try air-dried versus (heat) kiln dried. I suspect that air dried may cut cleaner on the lathe, too.
I've also seen some issues where the kiln dried wood was supposedly dry, but wasn't. When I built a house for my parents, 1500 sq feet of flooring arrived, and after letting the wood acclimatize, I began installing the floor. Then the funny stuff started... After about ten rows of 3 1/8" flooring, my distance started growing on one end of the floor. What I eventually determined was that the flooring had almost been dried fully, but not quite. Every piece of flooring was a little less than 1/64" wider on one end. The sawyer died about that time, so we were stuck with the wood. I can only guess that the fan in the kiln was blowing one direction, and the far end didn't quite dry fully before going through the shaper. I ended up having to join the flooring by hand in-place (after it had been nailed down) with a rabbet plane every 2 to 3 feet. The floor turned out great, but it was a heck of a lot of extra work. The take away: if a sawyer of 40 years can have that quality control issue with his commercial kiln, it can happen other places.
Next sad-story: A friend returned from a vacation a few years ago with a beautiful vase and bowl from a professional turner of good reputation, who is well known for drying wood in a kiln. The vase both warped and cracked, and the bowl was more warped than I would call acceptable for a twice-turned bowl. Granted, my friend heats with wood here in Alaska and has a very dry house, but this is still wet, temperate rainforest on this lower edge of Alaska....nothing like desert Arizona.
So: I'm not discounting heated kilns entirely...I'm just saying, keep an eye out for potential problems, especially with too much heat and incomplete drying. I'm confident that closer attention to detail could have prevented both the flooring and turning problems. As for "killing" the wood, I think that is just something to be aware of past 120°F or so. Again, I would want to compare air dried to kiln dried, and maybe even do some experiments with bowls in utility use.