A key feature in RabbitMQ 1.7, unmentioned in this post, is native SSL support. Before this version, stunnel was required to talk securely with Rabbit.
And plugins! I didn't talk about it because there is not much to show at this point, but the BQL plugin is a great example of what's possible. I fully expect that plugins will be the next big thing for RabbitMQ.
I've been using Apache Qpid for some time and am pretty happy with it. Unfortunately I get the feeling that development on the draft 1.0 spec has fizzled out. It's kind of a chicken and egg scenario with developers not wanting to implement a spec which is still in flux and the AMQP workgroup not wanting to ratify a spec which doesn't have at least two compatible implementations. I really hope this isn't the case and we'll eventually see the 1.0 spec ratified, because right now compatibility is kind of a crapshoot with different vendors all implementing different pre-release specs.
Just a note: for your code examples, you posted the publisher twice (I think the second one is supposed to be the code for the consumer).