It saddens me that not enough people are UPSET by this being the "official" release of the game. It further proved, yet again, that Notch has no clue what a development cycle is, as the game never left Alpha, and still hasn't.
He "released" the game without the promised mod support, without optimizing the game AT ALL, or fixing most of the major bugs that have persisted for over a year. Yes, that lovely memory leak due to not having any line of sight rendering is still around. If you're on a 32bit system, enjoy your frequent crashes.