Hi Jon,
thanks for your kind words - we are doing our best to improve VE PRO every day!
Public Betas: There are so many possible combinations with 3rd party plug-ins, that we figured, a public beta is the fastest way to get your input and to provide you with the next update - asap. A new build is already in the works, and of course the naming of the "public beta" will be changed as soon as a release is "official".
In any case, even public betas have been thoroughly tested before, and you can always downgrade, if you like.
Regarding PCC: We will do our best to keep VE PRO compatible. If that doesn´t work for any reason, it will be mentioned in the changelog, of course. Also, if a build doesn´t work on PPC, it will most probably simply not install.
Best,
Paul