> I think many people are missing the point that this doesn't appear to be a finished product ready for developers to use.

It's absolutely a finished product, GitPod is the commercially available (and white-label-able) version, people are productively using this today, including using VSCode addons and writing their own.

> "Why would anyone switch to this from VSCode"

Imagine preparing a Docker image of everything reasonably needed in your dev environment, and then giving your developers one click access to be totally set up with company-standard configuration. The IDE goes from wild-west everyone working their own way, to something that can be supported, where new devs can be brought up to speed in days instead of weeks, something with real consistency.