Gary:
Gee, seems like working around Illustrator can be a full-time job, as far as your suggestion yes, but group the offset path with an image. H-m-m-m. Also Illustrator cannot do a text-wrap on an image. It's not that it can't be done, it just should have been done properly.
How about those beta-testers? Go team, go!
You might not like the fact that AI CS did not inherit all the bells and whistles in InDesign's text engine, but text wrap is still a vast improvement over what it was in AI 10. I can name quite a few other things that ID does but that AI lacks. I can name even more that AI does that ID doesn't. I don't see where beta-testing has much to do with that.