Your suggestions surely makes sense and, it's funny we also signed an NDA with LM and received the Beta of 1.0 (I still have the discs they sent me via mail) something like 2 years ago, months before the first public release, not just a few days...
I should probably asked for getting early access to the 1.4 but, the issue is, I must be absolutely sure the executable don't change from a pre-release to the final release, because there are a couple of things that even if they just recompile the executable, might move things in memory and/or change the build number, so it's probably safer to make tests on the released version anyway, because we can't be sure they won't do last-minute fixes after sending me a pre-release, and I surely can't ask them to delay the release for everybody, only to allow me to fix the Addon Manager again.
In fact, a better solution would be, instead, if they added things I need to look for in specific memory locations, as official Simconnect calls that won't change between releases, so the Addon Manager could be made forward compatible with future versions. I'll try to talk with them about this.
Now, if only they finally fixed that dreaded 3DS Max exporter...