Trackpads pretty much always work out of the box, but typically do not support more advanced features, and/or they're kind of a pain to set up. I think you and the person you're replying to are talking about different things(?)

Whether these advanced features are desirable is of course a matter of opinion. Personally, I find macbooks very hard to use because the trackpad never does what I want on account of having the motor skills of a spastic five year old. So I don't miss this at all.

I agree they work out of the box but badly. I use non of the advanced features (gestures) of trackpads apart from two fingers to right click. I still struggle with most trackpads on linux.

On mac I disable nearly all gestures, I prefer the keyboard shortcuts.

You are right though, we're probably all talking about different aspects of trackpad usage.