1.7 has migrations (huge), app loading refactor (big), system check framework (big, but relatively internal), and custom lookups API (cool, but not fully utilis

1.7 has migrations (huge), app loading refactor (big), system check framework (big, but relatively internal), and custom lookups API (cool, but not fully utilised yet). Most of the other features were smaller niceties. 1.8 has public Meta, multiple template engines, contrib.postgres, and query expressions (my pet). Again, most other features were smaller nice to haves. I'd say the features of both are relatively on-par. Migrations probably give a false sense of scale just because that one feature was so big. As for the "new normal" comment, I agree with you. I'm not sure there are many big bang features ready to go or that have been proposed. I think 1.9 will see lots of incremental improvements and bug fixes.