I still don't really "get" the syllable perspective but it seems like it's just a mapping of one stroke (I think my confusion is what constitutes a "stroke") on specialized hardware to several on a qwerty board? [..] It seems the main benefit is having those mappings done for you and available system-wide.
From playing around with it for a few minutes, there's a little bit more to it than that. It auto-inserts spaces between words, but there are some keys which add to the end of the previous word (e.g. one button adds 'es' to words ending in 's' or 's' to other words, or makes a new word if part of another chord). So it isn't a direct one-chord-to-one-string-of-characters mapping.
From playing around with it for a few minutes, there's a little bit more to it than that. It auto-inserts spaces between words, but there are some keys which add to the end of the previous word (e.g. one button adds 'es' to words ending in 's' or 's' to other words, or makes a new word if part of another chord). So it isn't a direct one-chord-to-one-string-of-characters mapping.