Cryptonote coins are still in their early stages. Darkcoin has 4 months of development lead. Then there is the fact that a QT wallet already existed for Darkcoin to use since it is basically a bitcoin clone.
Darkcoin is based on Bitcoin's blockchain which gives it something like 3-4 years development lead, not 4 months.
But the longer the main feature that has been hyped for months keeps getting pushed back the more people will lose faith in Darkcoin and it will continue to lose both value and support. Without the anonymity feature functioniong 100%, Darkcoin has nothing.
The main feature is online right now. It's the payments of masternodes that are being delayed.
Yeah, people forget that Darksend already works! Sure, there is a limit of 10 drk in place, but it works, so removing it won't take long.