I disagree. Makefile syntax has been a barrier to entry for many engineers I've worked with. When I saw this I got very excited. I haven't used it yet, but I'm looking forward to playing with it next week.
Don't get me wrong, I love make, but I also can admit it's old and has some legacy warts. Phony targets, double dollar signs, the tab thing you mention. I've learned to be ok with it, but I've seen it be a barrier to adoption.
I'm not saying it should be a barrier, I'm saying it is a thing I have experienced in my career.
It sounds like you're both using it for different purposes. What the parent commenter meant is that this doesn't completely overlap with Make's feature set.
Make has intrinsic knowledge about how to build, compile, detect changes and recompile source code, and more. If you're using make solely as a task runner then yes, this could be a much more developer-friendly replacement.
Yes the tab thing is stupid, vim makes it not matter.