No .NET again

Acrylic has gone live!.  Greetings from within Microsoft!  I'm excited to let you know that we've just released the beta for Acrylic, an application for professional graphic designers.  ... and you can expect to see some posts from me regarding the issues I've faced trying to automate an unmanaged application with VS 2005 (Whidbey).  ...  If there are any specific topics feel free to suggest them. [via MSDN Blogs]

Specific topic - why isn't it a managed application? On and on and on and on they go about how managed is the *only* way to go and yet once more eat their own dog food not they do. Clearly this app is written with VS 2005 and given that it is in beta now, .NET 2 was a possibility - why was it not used?

According to the blog, because it was acquired as an unmanaged app. And yet also according to the blog, flip /clr on the whole thing and it compiles and works flawlessly - so, why wasn't the beta shipped compiled that way? (Or have I missed a meaning on "flip /clr"?).