My general understanding (and it might be just mine) is that dev team wants to get internals right before releasing GUI, because a fancy GUI with shitty internals is just a polished turd. As far as I know these internals include the database branch, which has been running stable for me for over 2 weeks. (gets the blockchain out of memory)
Correct:
Why monero is not user-friendly like most other cryptocurrencies? Why there is no official GUI walletMonero is not a Bitcoin clone, and so it's code is entirely new (originally derived from Cryptonote). Similarly to the early Bitcoin days, a lot of pieces have just not been built yet - the puzzle is largely incomplete. There's good and bad that comes with this fact, amongst other things: there is certainly some additional risk as the code is a lot more experimental than that of Bitcoin, while on the other hand, there is also a lot of potential, as Monero is just in it's infancy. A GUI Wallet is certainly an important part of this puzzle, and there are unofficial GUI wallets that can be used (recognizing that they are test-quality software) see the next question.
The GUI wallet won't be just a CLI wallet with a GUI. I will also cater for payment processors and web wallets (source).
We also plan to have a framework to do SPV-style clients like Electrum, so Windows users won't have to sync the blockchain, etc. (source). Note that the unofficial lighwallet (see next question) is not as light as this solution would be.
I forget what some of the other internals are. I don't know if i2p is something they're trying to do pre-GUI.
Different things, but it could be possible that official GUI ships with i2p. Or not. Different concerns, different teams (
Privacy solution)
I'm pretty sure the mnemonic key you get from mymonero.com IS NOT compatible with simplewallet. It can only be used on the web wallet. I think there are plans to make them compatible, but I don't think they are right now.
Confirmed not compatible, but unifying the two is planned.
Regarding smart mining, I like to quote smooth:
The vision here is a wallet that asks you when you want to install: "Do you want to devote some of you CPU power to help secure the network. You will be eligible to receive free coins as a reward (recommended) [check box]." Get millions of users doing that and it will drive down the value of mining to where neither botnets nor professional/industrial miners will bother, and Satoshi's original vision of a true p2p currency will be realized.
