I read the forums a bit and from what I see people are enthousiastic about 3D ans Max, but Max is a bit incomplete and there are no betas/timelines for GUI and 3D for Max.
Your information is inaccurate. And if my choice is waiting 3 months (if the choice is that clear anyway) because of the underlying technology I simply switch technologies.
It's not 3 months. If memory serves the latest estimate was "before christmas" for the GUI module, (and "not before christmas" for the 3D module) so that's at most 2 months. "It all runs on the same computer"
Well there's a subtle, but important difference between that, and "It runs the same on all computers".