Agreed. Used to have an IBM Thinkpad with a trackpoint and loved it. Then I got first a Dell and later an HP laptop with trackpoints and could never get used to either of them. They just didn't work anywhere near as well as my old Thinkpad. I cannot really articulate the difference, but it was massive.
I think its because on Thinkpads, the trackpad is rather terrible, so you are forced to use the trackpoint if you want quick, trouble-free movement without a mouse. On the macbook, the trackpad is gorgeously smooth, you don't need to leave the homerow in order to move the cursor - can do any movement with either thumb.
The appeal is that your fingers don't ever need to leave the homerow and also working from your lap on a bus for example is much easier since your hand doesn't have room to move to get to the trackpad