But yes, it's hit or miss. My Dell M6800 'portable workstation' has an abysmal touchpad (really, what were they thinking?), but then, since it is way too heavy to actually reside on the lap, I use a mouse (which in any case is more precise) there. So the proper question is then, why did they bother with one at all?
Otoh, the cheap lenovo ThinkPad 11e has a surprisingly good one.
It's a bigger picture thing. Apple has some vision for what a good laptop is like, and has been iterating for decades to achieve that. Each new generation brings some amount of change (including some real failures like the Touch Bar and butterfly keyboard).
Absolutely any other manufacturer could achieve that if they were willing to focus on it, iterate, and not give up. It would take some time, but it would happen.