I hadn't ever noticed that, but it must be because of the trackpoint. The trackpoint is centered in between the home keys so you can reach it with your index fingers, mouse buttons below that for thumbs, and thus trackpad below buttons. The root issue is that the place you rest your hands on a qwerty keyboard is slightly left of center.

Edit: now I can't unsee that MBP has its trackpad right of home key center :)

Add lack of 16:10 screen to that. It's getting dumb. Is Apple buying up all laptop screens with this aspect ratio? Also, are non-Apple trackpads getting better?

These two things are the biggest issues every time I ponder moving to Linux (Windows is not an option or I'd look at the Surface alternatives). The P1 does indeed look very interesting otherwise.

HP spectre x360 has a centered trackpad... but I higly advice AGAINST this device for tons of other reasons (including the trackpad, btw, which is top-hinged-real-click and glass-made variety but it's still horrible).

I think the rationale is that it should be centered with the spacebar or something like that. To me it just looks ugly.

The ThinkPad P1 trackpad is centered.