I think it’s another example of vertical integration making it better. Apple making the hardware plus OS gives them an advantage, making the trackpad experience great is hard if you don’t control both.
Apple has also learned a ton about how to do this well from the iPhone.
It’s less vertical integration than MS not actually taking the steps to control this market.
For example, the Precision touchpad, which was the first actual touchpad tech MS created, with Windows previously testing touchpads as mouses, has been released for a little more than a decade.
Touchpads had been around for over 4 decades and have been standard to laptops since the mid to late 90s.
And the worst part is that MS still allows hardware vendors to ship non Precision touchpads today.
MS won’t allow you to run windows 10, but vendors can ship touchpads that only support decades old software.
It’s very hard to get Windows manufacturers to pay attention to the touchpad when MS itself isn’t interested.
Unfortunately, the Windows domination in the non Apple part of the industry means that serious change is only driven by MS.
A lot of advantages we think Apple has due to vertical integration are more because MS is pretty terrible
The problems you’re describing are largely because they don’t have vertical integration. They don’t have the ability (sometimes legally) to force suppliers to do things they want.
Microsoft tried to prevent crapware from being installed by OEMs a while back and got blocked.
What you’re describing is the effect of not controlling the stack and the only way to really do that is by doing it yourself.
Apple has also learned a ton about how to do this well from the iPhone.