Latest in this sense just means latest snap released.
Right now even though it feels like torture for some. It really is for the best interest of everyone that we take longer. In the time we delay, most of the time we get a couple of patch releases out. Leading to a more stable release when its automatically rolled out for all of the snap users. (which is a lot)
Indeed. We are going to introduce the 3.x track soon so people can begin to use 3.X as they wish.
We will keep posted!