But the uni student with a budget that only buys half a macbook doesn't get to care about trackpad quality.
Normal people don't say things like "The trackpad is unresponsive and the wifi drivers unreliable" They say "I just don't like it" "It feels kinda crap"
The vast majority of people don’t care about trackpad quality when it comes to shopping.
They do care when they *use* it but they either take it for granted when it works well, or it’s too small a papercut to trade in their device and buy/research a new one.
but it all combines together to make a smoother experience when using it, and it can convert people as a part of a whole.
Few months back I’ve seen anecdotal posts somewhere that new generations of managers are trying to shift computing to phones and tablets because they’re “better than laptops”. No one enforces a delightfulness standard for Windows laptops, and it is creating a skewed perception.
I used to be a die hard Android and Windows/Linux power user. I’d scoff at all the stuff people would mention on iOS/macOS because “well I can do that too if I do this and that”. But then I switched back to iOS/macOS for a project and a lot of the papercuts being solved out of the box was actually such a huge gain.
That’s not to say Apple is perfect. They can improve a ton too (give me a proper path bar in finder please!), but (and I say this often) the products they make are more than the sum of their parts.
but of course none of that is something that is evident when you’re shopping for a product.
Plus, the question one would ask is: “can this do this banal task?” not “which one does this banal task better”. So I see why it’s not prioritized on other platforms.
Most people are just shopping for capability and specs. The delightfulness is too ephemeral to consider until you encounter it yourself.
Most of the time they don't notice at all unless its truly atrocious or truly mind blowing (and whilst I can firmly say the macbook trackpad is the best I've ever used, lets be honest its not mind blowing). They might notice things don't feel as smooth as it did on their macbook (assuming they even had one last, if not how can you tell something is worse if its all you've ever had), but they're unlikely to narrow this down to the trackpad.
This is why people balk at the price of Apple Vision even though Apple managed to miniaturize a Macbook into a visor and added LiDAR, two 4K screens, a separate depth sensor, several other cameras, and even a 3D camera to it
That said, Mark’s devices aren’t bad for the price. They’ve been the best overall VR headsets for the past 2-3 years.