$$ is always appreciated
Looks like they put in a LOT more hook locations and whatnot. Looks like it'll be a product install now, no more edits necessary for the member's page / dropdown stuff!
As it stands, all profile fields show up under the "About Me" tab, regardless if you create a new tab via a plugin (that does NOT query for them itself), or using the built-in creator for categories. A very simple plugin can prevent profile fields from showing up, but it affects anything the default profile field SQL query spits out.
So, the current way I'm going is to have no edits, and keep the extra SQL call in, versus removing the extra SQL call, but leaving in a couple of edits. This way, if/when Jelsoft fixes it so that you can mark profile fields not to show up in About Me, a simple update will fix it versus more edits.
Also, since they've added this new category feature to profile fields, it will probably be possible to have multiple dropdowns (1 per category), without installing multiple versions of the plugin.