(Can I just say that I really hate people who dislike that metaphor? A quantum leap is a discontinuous and surprising change, not necessarily a massive one. It's more appropriate to describe a qualitative difference, not a quantitative one. As such it doesn't really matter that in reality a quantum leap is a tiny distance, what matters is that it's discontinuous, with no steps in between. That's what the metaphor is playing at. Something that seems familiar weirdly ends up in a suprising place it has no right to be. Not without being somewhere else in between first.)
On the MacBooks that same technology most certainly is a quantum leap: on the trackpads it actually feels like clicking down a physical button. On the phones that same sensation is not created. Not at all, not even a little tiny bit.
My hypothesis is that with the trackpad your only point of contact with a vibrating surface is the tip of your finger. With the phones you feel the whole device vibrating in your hand. That should make it harder to fool your brain into thinking you are holding anything but a vibrating device. I will have to lay the new iPhones flat on a table and test it out when I get the opportunity, maybe they would feel differently. (But even if they could create that feeling while flat on the table iPhones are probably set up differently than MacBook trackpads and more tuned to just create a pleasant vibration, since that's all they normally can do in your hand.)
All that said, yeah, real tactile feedback, if it can be pulled of convincingly, provides some neat perspectives for touch interfaces.