I second that
Mojangs 'design' has been slowly going down the pan since late beta (1.8+), yeah some things have been very awesome- but lately its past the tipping point; when not updating has more merits than following through.
Horses and redstone were a massive letdown for what they were, a lot of the new content is underdeveloped and/or left in for its exploits (beacons, villagers, tripwire, debug screen) and lately the official devs have basically said 'yeah- we're about to wreak all your old worlds' with the new biomes.
All the while that lighting bug isn't fixed and the mod API is nothing more than a boogeyman to scare young children around the campfire.
With modded MC; one issue is modders tiptoeing around the vanilla features, scared of touching anything for the sake of x-mod "compatibility/balance". The whole point of going modded is to have something different; if its in the way- it can go. Your mod will feel more immerse as a result.
I'll probably stick with 1.5/1.6 tops, luckily the new launcher has a backdating option- so for the first time everyone isn't forced to port forward. Its nice knowing there's a stable platform to work with.
(sorry-late reply, internet died last night)