I think it’s due to the organizational structure of Apple which gives them a huge advantage over everyone else. In the Linux world, people point the finger at the driver developers who in turn point the finger at the hardware makers and firmware developers. Apple, on the other hand, has all of these folks working together, all the way up the stack to the UI toolkit and application layers.

I fear that Linux touchpad support is a victim of Conway’s law [1] which means this problem can’t be solved by one specific team. It may mean rewriting the whole stack (and rewriting applications as a result).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law