At this rate something like coinjoin + confidential transactions will be ready before any of the anonymous coins get a proper GUI. Segwit is comming soon so if the alts want to compete against bitcoin they better hurry.
Only having confidential transaction is pretty useless from a fungibility and privacy standpoint unfortunately. Much more effort needs to made for a currency to be fully private. Privacy must be by default otherwise the anonymity set for your currency is quite low. This category of cryptocurrencies excites me so I look forward to future progress