"pre-alpha".. No, actually Beta versions have been shown and are distributed to the beta testers a long time ago.
"Mai reference motherboard" In my opinion what is sold is not the Mai reference board, it is the same design but produced elsewhere thus not a Mai board.
Same goes for (example) videocards based on same reference design but produced at diffrent factories, they are not sold as ATI reference cards but as Sapphire, Club-3D, Asus,GeCube and other brand names.