Spatial Joins in Model Builder

[MikeWissner]

I have been building a geoprocessing model in model builder and ran into problems when trying to integrate a spatial join.  I did some research and found the following threads:
http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/22985-Joins-do-not-work-in-Modelbuilder-10?highlight=spatial+join
http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/96308-model-builder-spatial-join-does-not-work?highlight=spatial+jo...
http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/95917-ModelBuilder-amp-spatial-join?highlight=spatial+join

As a workaround to my problem I used Zonal Statistics as Table and Join Field (two tools accomplishing the same task as a single spatial join should).

The above threads are old, so my question is has this bug been resolved by Esri? My datasets are in the same projection...