> I do wish mamedev would go back though to the pattern of doing bug fix releases > though.
I can only remember one specific bug-fix-only release in the history of MAME? And the next release *will* resolve a lot of problems - the recent serious breakage with save states have been fixed (which is good news for ClientServerMAME), and some improvements from the MESS Sega Saturn work are showing in ST-V, among other things. Plus HLSL continues to improve. (I'm hoping for some vector glow sometime soon myself).
The best thing you can do is make sure that whatever bugs pain you the most are well-documented in MAMETesters with clearly-written descriptions, inps/save states, and screen shots/mp3s where appropriate.