Competition is indeed good, and hopefully it will motivate CL to solve the problems in Poser and/or to work with users to solve compatibility problems.

DAZ will not be rushed, but after making the announcement of the public beta at the end of January, they have been silent. Even though the product page states that the schedule is subject to change [and it has -- original schedule had public beta scheduled at the time of the Mimic 2 release, but the current does not], the press release dated 11/25/2002 states that the projected release date is mid 2003.

I don't know if other people have asked DAZ about the status of Studio, but I have. I even suggested that Steve K. give an update to the communities. Steve wrote back that he would see what he could do, but he could not promise anything.