Yeah Lenovo actually removed the trackpoint in one generation (t440?) and had to bring it back due to demand. Maybe it's an acquired taste.
They never took it away, they tried to switch the touchpad to an integrated unit in the *40 gen (240, 440, 540) (like how Apple does it) and had to revert it because (1) they did such a godawful job of the sensitivity and (2) integrated touchpad buttons don't make sense in conjunction with the trackpoint.
Well, it was truly a piece of shitty crap. Absolutely not comparable to how Apple does it - and by several order of magnitude... it was a soo huge disaster that they made sure to design the next model so people would be able to retrofit its touchpad with buttons on their Tx40...