Why does nobody see past the Wave UI? Is nobody else excited by a paradigm of world-synced objects that respond to changes? Wasn't this the smalltalk dream?

Without a UI which absolutely nails the execution, it won't matter at all how great the technology is.

Speaking personally, beyond crashing, the UI itself still needs quite a lot more shaping and thinking through. It's very busy, and somewhat complex. It's not yet something that feels elegant in purpose.

One challenge is how you blend realtime and non-realtime in the same conversation -- it's actually quite tricky a UI conundrum. The technical aspect is one thing and they have that solved architecturally, but the UI part is intriguing. For example, realtime will tend to make people communicate in small bursts back and forth which will often dampen -- when in the same conversation -- the impulse for non-realtime, more thought out responses (like you have in a threaded forum such as this).

The underlying vision of the platform is huge, and with great potential. Over time I think wave will be vital. But I think the big challenge for Google and platform developers is beyond bugs, but to hone the clients that utilize it.

It's in PRE-alpha. What do they expect?

"25% of sessions end in crashes" what kind of programmers are they employing there? Heard of scrum guys?