While I agree that these metrics can be subjective at times, I believe there are some fairly well-established features that dictate whether something is, objectively, a good product. In the case of a trackpad, gestures such as pinch to zoom are arguably an essential (for me at least), as well as stepless scrolling, configurable pointer acceleration configuration, and a reasonable size.

In the case of a keyboard, sure -- that's a whole other kettle of fish. I quite like the one on my Dell XPS, but I'm sure some others wouldn't.

However, I think you've downplayed how much a keyboard matters here: for me, it makes or breaks a laptop (or a USB keyboard, of course). When the laptop is on, I'm spending a good 70% of my time using the keyboard. Therefore, I would argue it is one of the most important things to get right.

I've come across good keyboards, bad ones, and ones that are just OK -- as an example, the more sponge-like ones on Logitech media keyboards do not make a good experience. In my experience, you have to try a keyboard to know whether you like it, but you can filter out plain terrible ones from other online reviewers' experiences.

I'm typing this on my work windows laptop, which can tick all these boxes!

But the experience is still terrible. While the acceleration and such are fine enough for my use, I still get the feeling there's some lag between my finger movement and the pointer on the screen. There are things which I loved on my 11 yo mac which still don't exist on windows, like "drag hold" which only holds for a little while. On windows, it either doesn't hold at all, or holds forever. But this is purely a software issue.

Funnily enough, Linux with X11 on this very same laptop runs circles around windows, and has none of these issues.

I've never had any issue with palm detection on either OS, but I'm not sure if it's because it works well, or because of the size and position of the touchpad.

However, despite the poor performance on Windows, I still find it usable for random "office" use, and never felt the need to cart around a mouse when I'm not at my desk.

This is a big one. Something I found really impressive, even on the first iPhone in 2007, was that it felt like my finger was moving the display itself, rather than performing a gesture to elicit an action. I feel the same way about the macOS trackpad, it feels almost connected to what is on screen. Other systems usually have that gesture/response feeling, which doesn't feel good natural to use.

It's impossible to be in sync anyway, unless you avoid VSYNC, and then you'll have tearing ans at best halve the delay. There are limits to these things that not even "Apple" can violate.

And first iPhone sure was not faster than SE.

Maybe with some 120+Hz refresh rate, and some SW tricks, you can get close to what you're talking about. First iPhone did not have that.

Never handled an SE, though, but I doubt it's worse.

> Response time 35.5 ms

So at 60 fps, that's 2 frames delay + some. (and this is just display response time and doesn't include the content rendering, double buffering, and the input lag)

Here's the input lag for phones from similar era as the SE 1st gen: https://blog.gamebench.net/touch-latency-benchmarks-iphone-x... (88ms)

Another set of numbers: https://danluu.com/input-lag/

You can move your finger quite far in 80ms.

Why can't they?

You can't really put "better touchpad" on a label... or can you?

That's a real problem in many situations: users are often under-estimated (they are also often dumb, which doesn't help).

Apple doesn't put "better touchpad" on their labels either. It's just very very obvious that they're better.

Exactly. Everyone knows Apple has better touchpad, but nobody knows that about some random PC manufacturer. How will they signal that he has better touchpad in order to justify the higher price?

There are plenty of PC manufacturers that aren't "some random PC manufacturer". ThinkPad, Asus, Acer, HP, Dell. They are known brands that can easily maintain reputations.

I would also wager that the sort of customers who are willing to spend more for interface refinements like an excellent touchpad already use Apple hardware at a higher rate than the general population, further shrinking customer demand for good PC touchpads.

Of course, I don't think anyone would expect an Apple level touchpad on a budget Windows laptop. But they don't even seem to be on premium Windows laptops.

You're probably right that premium Windows laptops are a super niche market so there isn't much incentive for touchpad manufacturers to cater to it. That's one huge advantage Apple has. If they want a product that no manufacturers want to make, they can just make it themselves.

Yeah, from that my conclusion is that the market for Windows laptops with really excellent touchpads is simply not large enough to be worth pursuing. My guess is that the increase in revenue between a "good enough touchpad" and "really excellent touchpad" is nowhere near enough to cover the astronomical costs of developing one.