Never mind v7.
6.49 has been in the oven now for what, over half a year?
And yes, I know it will be ‘When it’s ready!’. But roughly when will that be?
When 7.1 go “stable”
7.1 stable and the next week 6.49 long term… 
The only sensible reason for releasing 6.49 would be to make it kind of transitional package to upgrade to 7.1. Which likely means including some updated routerboot firmware (so that v7.1 successfully boots) or some configuration sanitizing. Otherwise I don’t see any point in doing it. For security releases for devices not being able to upgrade to 7.1 (or for admins that don’t want to jump the 7.1 wagon for another year or three), maintaining 6.48 series should do.
No offense, but this seems more like your opinion than what is realistically going to happen. Correction, it seems more like what you would do, less than what Mikrotik would(usually) do.
The last 6.49 beta was released 2 months ago. It doesn’t seem to have too many bugs. And while v7 now has accelerated development, it doesn’t look like it will arrive before christmas season. And 6.48 seems a bit long in the tooth now for stable.
No offense taken.
But what exactly in 6.49beta line makes you want it released because you’re missing it from 6.48? OK, change log does include a few stability improvements, so these should be released in some version from v6 series (either as 6.48.5 or 6.49).
Simple fact that it’s been some time since last release doesn’t make release of newer v6 release any more urgent.
Sorry, backup is broken in 6.49beta. THAT IS A BIG THING!!!
v7 Is for me a thing I can’t try without BIG risks because I can’t go back v6 without having to take a troublesome road of manually restoring the export.
I’m not talking about users who like to live on the edge (upgrading from 6.49beta to 7.1rc). I’m talking about “sane” users who are using “stable” (not about “paranoid” users on “long-term” 
) … I believe backups work just fine on 6.48.4. And it’s those “sane” users who might or might not absolutely need stable 6.49.
I did not mean that they should just switch the current beta build to stable. Ofc. they should fix that bug.
I assume a version that is already six months in development should be somehow stable and certainly, not have the most important part in testing being broken. This is the next release in v6 and instructions for updating to v7 did not include the notice to only update from version 6.48.
In the beta Mikrotik fixed stuff that is not even working in v7 and in that perspective the beta is better than the RC.
Your assumptions about thing being in development for certain amount of time becoming stable … are just assumptions. While things do work like this usually, they don’t have to. Dead-ends in development process are not unheard of and I’d completely understand if MT declares 6.49 a dead-end.
I guess official upgrade path, when v7.1 is released as stable, will include whatever stable and long-term versions will be at that moment (e.g. if v7.1 was released to stable today, it would probably include 6.47.10 and 6.48.4). Other paths might work or might not work. I certainly don’t expect official upgrade path will include any of betas or RCs (hence I completely understand that currently upgrading from any version to 7.1RC3 currently is not in devels’ focus).
If 6.49 is declared a dead-end I am in trouble, because I can’t go back to 6.48 due to no working backup available in 6.49 and not forward to v7 because the config coversion is not on the radar.
Hmmm .. you can’t downgrade from 6.49betaX to 6.48.4 without netinstalling device? And you can’t get (at least most of) config exported to text file? If answer to both is NO, then I’m surprised.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t say that 6.49 is a dead-end, only MT can declare such thing. I was just saying that this is not impossible. But if that actually happens, I guess you’ll have to bite a bullet and get out of this beta mess.
If you can’t get out of it, then you shouldn’t have gone in to it in the first place. If it’s that important, why are you running beta software on it?
You’ll just have to Netinstall it and restore your 6.48 backup, and then teach yourself not to be so daft for the next time.
If Mikrotik had not broken backup there would not be any problems. I have lots of experience with running Beta’s by Mikrotik and it worked that well that nobody noticed that Backup was broken for several months. I noticed it when I had a short stay on v7 and normally I can return to the Beta without an hitch.
This time I tried Netinstall and so inadvertently cutting myself off from a roll back to Beta. And then even worse Netinstall did nothing despite I used the correct version. Running into walls here.
In the end I solved the problem of going back, but it invoked a lot of work but triggered a project to create a better Export/Import file so that the dependency on Backup/Restore would be less prominent.
If Mikrotik would me let escape the messed up Beta.
If Mikrotik allowed you to exit the beta without bothering, would you have to bite a bullet?