I've used a lot of pointers (keyboard, joystick, mouse, trackball, trackpad, multitouch, retinal motion, wacom) on a lot of operating systems (TI-94A, solid-state radar displays, Apple II, whatever was behind ACDS and CEC, Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac, FreeBSD, etc, etc) in a lot of different contexts (tracking targets, directing fire, games, fetal ultrasound, planning and reading MRI, CT, Da Vinci machines, surgical microscopes) etc, etc, etc.

I don't think the Mac trackpad is anywhere close to a placebo. It's a parachute issue. (http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/327/7429/1459). For the platform (personal computing), the mac trackpad is a hands-down winner.

Keep in mind though, it only really performs that well in OSX. In Windows there are gestures that clash with each other, in particular trying to right click a link in Chrome causes the window to scroll, very frustrating.