This behaviour one of the things in Mac OS that nobody really notices because it feels so intuitive, but if you took it away everyone would be puzzling over why scrolling feels broken.
I think the story is similar for Windows, but a little less satisfying since their hodepodge of UI toolkits starts from the very core, whereas at least with modern desktop Linux distros the core apps are generally implemented the same way.
Alas, mouse wheels are a whole other story. Pixel perfect scroll wheels have been a thing for a while, and Windows actually has support for these (not that it works anywhere). Support in Linux has been progressing at a similarly glacial pace, but it looks really promising. That's one spot where Apple is definitely years ahead. (If only they would make a practical mouse…).
No longer true. Windows 10 works pretty well as long you use precision trackpad, or use an apple touchpad with a third party driver (https://github.com/imbushuo/mac-precision-touchpad , https://magicutilities.net )
There is not a similar effect in other applications.
Because of their low resolution, windows scrolling is done one text line at a time, while macs scroll a pixel at a time.
This sounds superficial, but it is really not. With the higher resolution, you get a very direct connection with the scrolled content. Without this almost tactile feedback, inertial scrolling doesn’t work at all.
And since scrolling is like 90 % of what I use a trackpad for, I will not even consider using windows with a trackpad until they have fixed it.