Comment by legitster

It was the first good trackpad that supported gestures that are now common, things like two finger swipe to scroll (inertial scrolling was huge), pinching, two-finger for right click. I still see people using windows laptops with a mouse plugged in because in general windows laptops have touchpads that suck, and it was way more common a decade ago. Innovation in the windows laptop space was adding unusable gimmicks like a scroll stripe or right-click by tapping in a corner. And then apple introduced a haptic trackpad so you can do a tactile click anywhere, none of that bullshit tap to click where you have to keep your hand lifted so you don't accidentally tap on something. And windows laptops are still lagging behind, at least they got rid of buttons and have hinged touchpads, now we wait for them to catch up and add haptics.

Maybe I should try a Thinkpad but otherwise the Macbook trackpad is the only one that really works for me and doesn't feel awkward. The gestures are right and the feel is right. I agree about size. It could be smaller.

While still anecdotal, I'll give you two data points:

The trackpad on my Thinkpad E495 is hanging and has lost the ability to register clicks, and had been like that after only two years of use. I think the reason is that the whole construction with lots of space is collecting dust. You can use the physical buttons above the pad, and some people like this retro design even, but IMO it's just reducing space and adds a border and height distance for your finger to travel, so arguably outdated and objectively worse.

The Elan trackpad on my Thinkpad x13 gen 2 has been defective from the start and registers palm contact where there is none, with the effect that the touchpad stops responding like every 30s; this is a known defect.

The trackpad works extremely great with macos. The acceleration curve, smoothness of scrolling, multi-gesture support that closely matches the UI paradigms, click anywhere and it perfectly registers, etc. It truely is to me the primary pointing device for mac and I immediately bought the external trackpad when trying external keyboards.

But none of that properly transfers to windows, and most of its hardware tweaks become irrelevant. I also didn't mind the Surface laptop trackpads, but vastly prefer a mouse with extra buttons for windows machines TBH (there are a ton of great mice too, so all things considered it's fine that way)

... I'm sorry but I think you're missing the forest for the trees. You might prefer a smaller trackpad, but then why? Just increase the sensitivity to reduce your finger movements.

Anyway, Apple's trackpad is good because it perfectly captures intent, whatever the situation and the number of fingers. It's flawless. You got half your palm on the side of the trackpad while writing? Nope, not picked up. You quickly flick with half your palm on there? Boom, got it. Five finger gesture? No prob fam.