It's 50% magic, and 50% actually caring about the product. PC laptops are a race to the bottom because the only way they can sell laptops are by advertising their specs on Best Buy counters or Amazon pages. Review that average consumers bother to read rarely rate laptops on how enjoyable they are to use. Most customers (in my experience) will have a few key metrics they want (generally battery life, web browsing performance, and storage). Everything else, from quality to screen to input devices, are effectively cost centers to the manufacturer. Dell XPS and Surface are getting there
on trackpads, but they still haven't put forward the full effort for it.
That's only true with low-mid tier devices. Try handling a ThinkPad X1 Carbon, it's way better professional hardware than a MacBook Pro imo. Super light, mate screen, great keyboard.
My theory on Apple's design process with the MBP is they put all their efforts on the first 60 seconds with the product. The touchpad is the first thing you touch in a store, the bright colorful screen, and the very cool look the flat keyboard gives to the whole machine contribute a lot to the first impression.
The finger pains, the electric conductivity and heavy weight of the aluminium, the reflective screen, those are things you suffer from only once you've already bought the product.
