It is very much software – all modern trackpads are capacitive touch surfaces.
A MacBook’s trackpad hardware is differentiated because it is covered in glass, larger than most trackpads by a lot, and it clicks using a force sensor + haptics (so it is more reliable / has an even click across its surface).
It's not enough to just say "all trackpads are capacitive surfaces, fix it in software!" when it's actually the controllers attached to all of these capacitive surfaces that are different. The driver can be as intelligent as you like but if the controller only sends limited data in response to touches then you still won't get very far.
Thinking back to older models though, MacBook trackpads were better than any other I tried before they had all those hardware features. It’s obviously been a long time, but I feel that a really old MacBook would still feel nicer than most modern trackpads on other platforms.
It’s the one thing that’s keep me on the Apple platform for almost 2 decades now.
2008 is when Apple's trackpads got full general multitouch support. (Prior to that, they supported 2-finger scrolling.) The 2008 MacBook Pros still had a big bar as the physical button, but later that year they started introducing the unibody MBP with the entire trackpad as a physical button hinged at the top. In 2015 they introduced the Force Touch haptic trackpad. As far as I can recall, all three generations of trackpad have basically the same cursor motion behavior and similar sensitivity.
A MacBook’s trackpad hardware is differentiated because it is covered in glass, larger than most trackpads by a lot, and it clicks using a force sensor + haptics (so it is more reliable / has an even click across its surface).