I actually thought about this for a while because a preliminary google search presented no results... but I'm surprised to see that you guys have reached the conclusions I've seen in the thread so far.
*edit* Facepalm, the post right above mine actually presents my reasoning, haha. My fault for skimming too fast
I echo the post which asked why you need a programmable keyboard for "[Win] notepad [Enter]" to open notepad. He seems to have figured it out, but I haven't? I'm going to go on a small rant to make a point, feel free to skip the next few paragraphs.
Anyone who has used linux before knows that that opening programs by _typing the program's name_ should be the _default_. In fact, in general there's two expectations:
1) [Win] program-name [Enter] opens program-name
2) In a terminal typing program-name opens program-name
2a) In Windows, typing program-name in the Run prompt opens program-name
In linux, when you install programs via their package manager, it gives you all of that (well, if your distro of linux doesn't have a start menu you'd have to rebind [Win] to open the equivalent of Run). In windows, you do (1) by dumping a shortcut in the Start folder and you do (2) and (2a) by adding the path the binary to the %PATH% environment variable. The latter is actually how linux does it, but the package manager does it for you during installation which makes it transparent. Yay, transparency! The vast majority of installers in Windows do (1), but not (2).
Anyways, that was a long rant to say basically: 1) Windows installers usually suck and package managers are godly 2) I don't see a need for a programmable keyboard to enable these "flows"
It is true, a programmable keyboard gives you stuff like [Win] q [Enter] to open _any_ program like a browser or the calculator or dota or whatever. But, you could easily write an autohotkey script and use that. The only counter-argument I've heard for that is that it's not portable and you would need to install autohotkey on all of your machines... but eh. I think there's a _very small percentage of users_ who have that sort of complaint.
The reason why programmable keyboards made sense to me was when I thought about purchasing a 60% keyboard. I thought, "Uh... hm. What do I do without a function key row? I need that a lot" And it hit me. You need the programmable keyboard to simply replace all of the keys that are not physically there on a 60% keyboard. The beauty of a 60% is the small form factor, but also, the fact that you need to replace the other keys with keybindings actually enables you to have a _more comfortable layout_ (e.g. no more needing to reach over to press Home and End! No more needing to use two hands/stretching hand awkwardly for ctrl + alt + del and ctrl + alt + esc!). At least, this is how I see it... I haven't bought a 60% yet!
As somehow who now uses autohotkey + pentadactyl (a fork of vimperator) + dexpot... I'm actually thinking that 60% is a bit _too_ small. My brain might explode having to memorize all of the key combos (I should add the IDE I use for work too!). But for a normal user who isn't weird enough to use stuff like the pentadactyl plugin or dexpot... the programmable keyboard could actually be extremely sweet for the reason I described above (i.e. easier access to alt + f4, ctrl + alt + del, print screen, pseudo numberpad, etc.)
*edit 2* Someone might argue that, if you can remap hotkeys with autohotkey/in each individual program... why do you need keys like Home/End or F1-F12 at all? That's a reasonable argument, but at the same time you might not want to go through the trouble of remapping all of the keys in a new program. I mean... I installed pentadactyl because I didn't want to reach over to Home/End in browsers, but do others really want to spend that time? I don't know, would need to think more about this argument.
