It has PID temperature control (typical) but _also_ pressure control. You could build a Gaggiuino for less money and the same effort, but you'd be left with a far lower quality piece of hardware as the Gaggia hardware has a shitty boiler, plumbing, group, and casing.
I'm not a huge fan of vibropumps either, but they're common for pressure profiling machines (up to $3-4K) because they're easier to control and compact. Moving to a rotary pump would cost ~$300 more at the component level, so while I'd a reasonable upgrade it would hurt the overall economics of the product to make that standard.
I still think it's expensive -- I personally would try to hit the market with a $999 kit cost if at all possible. The market for big spender espresso geeks without a machine is indeed small.