Integration Services vNext Coming Soon?

That title may be a little premature - but I've recently seen a (relative) boatload of Connect submissions getting resolved, either positively or negatively.  Some submissions of mine have been "fixed", and several of the other MVPs have had movement on their issues, like Simon Sabin's (blog|twitter) recent post about the long-awaited "undo" feature.
I'm encouraged by three of my issue resolutions.  First, a cosmetic Data Flow Sequence Container got a "fixed" resolution.  Not a huge feature, to be sure, but an indication that the designer interface is improving.  Here's hoping they fix up the inconsistencies and lack of polish on the Task and component editor interfaces that many of us have complained mercilessly reported to them over the years about.  Second, the ability to add Input Dependency directives to custom data flow components will be quite significant to me - and perhaps you if you use the Kimball Method SCD Component.  That capability should help me (the component developer) better communicate to the SSIS data flow engine about how I consume buffers, allowing it to better manage memory and other resources.  Third, and perhaps largest for the "third-party" developers out there is that there will (allegedly) be a method to install custom objects into the toolbox.  This will make using third-party objects in SSIS a lot less daunting for most organizations - and hopefully make using them a little more commonplace.
On the other hand, some very basic suggestions have been nixed.  My suggestion to extend the Aggregate component to allow Min and Max operations on strings was just rejected.  I have to say I simply can't understand it.  Seriously, I have to code this by hand in a Script?
Of course, just because those three example suggestions have been marked as "fixed" by the SSIS team that doesn't mean that they're fixed.  The proof will be in the product itself, whenever we get our sweaty little palms on it.
And despite our collective tingles as we watch Connect items get resolved - we may be jumping the gun when it comes to drawing conclusions like the title of this post.  Since I haven't been observing the release process for SQL Server for very long, assuming that resolving these issues means we're close to a CTP or something like that may be false.  Even if it is an indicator that they've "locked down" the release feature set... it may be a year... or two... before the product works its way through the rest of their development cycle.
So take those Connect items for exactly what they are - a commitment from the product team that they heard you, and did what they could to deliver.