Heh, yep, I mean subjectively I think 2018+ releases really got better and they stuck to their roadmaps more - I am quite happy with all they developed in the last couple of years. The roadmap moving forward also, to me at least, seems really great.
The RNDR framework is quite something. I actually gave it a go on a simpler scene and well... It worked super great. I do think they are looking into solving some issues with complex scenes and all that but my experience so far (on that one project) was stellar. The render job came back quick, it was as excepted and the previews for the project (it was an animation) all displayed properly.
I am also super fascinated with their work on Vulkan as supposedly most of Octane is actually already running on Vulkan / GLSL. I'm really intrigued as to how the ecosystem would open up once more hw vendors start getting in on it. I'm actually happy to see that the broader community is also quite interested in seeing how that develops especially since the other hardware vendors are also getting in on the RT game. I'm giving Otoy major props for pushing in that direction.
As for the thing being ACES color managed - There is still no OCIO but you can export in ACES. So basically in my opinion its still not production ready from the ACES standpoint but I think they've mentioned a couple of times that its going to get gradually better. I think, but don't hold me to it, I think they improved the color management in the standalone and added ACES exports as the first step. You also have control over sRGB / Float type of imports but that's been in there since forever.
So yeah, I mean I'm really excited about what they are doing. It goes without saying, I'm also excited to see what the Corona folks have going in the CPU front. :P
