Moving ahead in time to the present, you can see from the below pictures that the design has changed a little, but not by much. The materials are different, and the windows are now installed. The wide baseplate continues to be present (thankyou), and the cover is still part of the package. The cover is designed to protect the feedlips of the magazine, which is the section that is most often damaged. The cover works with an empty magazine, as well as fully or partially loaded magazines.
I have been running the PMAGs through my duty and training weapons for awhile now, and have found them to be boring and even mundane in their function. They simply work, and work, and work.
I've thrown fully loaded magazines around in the snow, left them out overnight loaded and then thrown them onto concrete slabs 40 feet away. The mags seem less than impressed with my efforts. I've already seen much heavier people than myself jump up and down on them, so I haven't bothered trying to recreate that visual oddity. I've run hundreds and hundreds of reload drills, and the magazines have a great feel in handling. I attribute that good "feel" to the ribbing, and wide floorplate that really allow for a solid nonslip grasp under stres.
Overall, Magpul seems to have created a high reliability magazine that will be capable of mass production. I anticipate having a stock pile of them for myself, as well as having a dedicated training pile to let other officers, MIL friends, and trainers/ instructors use.