I think that the addition of support for keyframe-based animations in 1.1.5 is really the killer feature.

This will allow for drop-in animations (like animate.css, mentioned in the deck) in the same sort of way that bootstrap allowed for drop-in styles.

If you don't have a specific reason not to, I'd highly recommend using the unstable branch today. I've had no problems with it since I switched several months ago, and any breaking changes have been pretty well documented in the release notes.

Agreed.

I'm just wondering how long it will take to get people to convert to this way of thinking.

meh , ng-animate is ultra buggy.