You have waited. You have watched the snapshots come out. You saw the Prerelease. Well now the time has come, and Minecraft 1.3 is available for download. More than three months after Minecraft 1.2.5, the latest version is finally out. This new update includes more generated structures, LAN multiplayer, trading with villagers, more redstone stuff, and Jesus Christ Himself coming out of the sky and welcoming you to the new update. In all seriousness, we posted every single new feature in this post. Since you have probably heard enough of what's new, go get it! You can update by opening Minecraft and clicking Update when asked. Be warned, you won't be able to get on many servers until they update Bukkit, so you might want to wait a bit as well.
Source: @jeb_