I think gui should be releases in summer. And mid next year there should be a hard fork of monero. But not sure if this is correct though.
Maybe not the best place to ask, but why does it take so much more time?
A GUI already exists, but it's external. Works fine even with the latest beta binaries (tested).
Link:
http://monero.org/monerox-client/On Windows, last I checked, you had to force kill the daemon or MoneroX process after closing the GUI with the recent binaries, or it will remain in memory. If there wasn't this issue, I'd recommend it like you do.