The countdown to Spring Boot 1.0 is speeding up! RC2 was released Wednesday, with RC3 hot on its tail due to a regression break. The RC2 release added a bunch of improvements and fixes in order to stabilize the runtime and make it easier for developers to put their apps together. I see a 1.0 in our near future!
http://spring.io/blog/2014/02/12/spring-boot-1-0-0-rc2-released