Really? Wow. This could not be farther from the truth. Unless you are using an Apple computer.
1. I use Outlook for my work and it syncs perfect for email, calendar, tasks etc. I use a program called Companion link. It works awesome.
Well, it works so perfectly that you purchased a $50 program to get it to work for you, so I am nopt sure what point you are making. Awesome usually means you don't need to purchase some $50 program to make it work.
In any case, my point was that I had to enter my account information into mutliple different program multiple times to get everything to work. I needed to use TaskSync to get my exchange Todos because the default calendar will not hide completed todos from a year ago, I needed to enter my gmail and exchange account information into K9 email because Android will no longer share email databases with Pure Calender Widget, and so on and so on. None of these things are a huge deal, but they tend to make the process more complicated. I find the tradeoffs worth it, but I am not comfortable sharing them with everyone else.
2. Transferring files is the easiest part. Plug in your phone drag over your files. Simple and way faster.
I think what a lot of people don't understand is that "drag and drop" isn't simpler. "drag and drop" is more powerful and while many people want/need that power, for a great number of people, the simpler method is good enough and much simpler.
On my iPhone, I used to sync about a dozen albums and a single playlist with 300 assorted songs in it from different artists sorted by how recently I had put the song into the playlist. Getting this information onto the phone was a matter of clicking on 13 boxes (once for each album and once for the playlist) and clicking the sync button. Getting the music onto my Note2 was a lot more complicated, and I still haven't found a way to retain my old playlist order.
3. Google backs up everything to your account. Enter your email and you are back in business. I bought a new phone and had it all setup in less than 30 minutes.
Itunes backs up your whole phone. Its literally just a matter of plugging in your new phone and hitting one button.
When I moved from one Galaxy Note to a second, I made sure I had "app sync" on and had done a sync. Then I
1) Entered my google and exchange login information
2) Manually installed all 40 or so apps I am using
3) Manually set up each app because not a single third party app restored its information. The only thing that saved me time was that many apps (ie Nova Launcher) allow you to manually backup your setup, so I was able to restore a few apps that way. I assume they offer this functionality because the google app backup doesn't work that well.
Its all doable, but it is more complicated for the average user.
If I had it rooted it would have only taken 15min.
People, I am not saying that Android can't do anything that the iPhone can. I'm saying that for some things, it is much complicated. Rooting to get things done in 15 minutes instead of 30 is what I call more complicated. The non-rooted restore method on Android is harder then the stock restore on iPhone. It just is.
4. For updates you can get everything over the air if you buy a Nexus phone. Samsung needs work on Kies, but my HTC phone was super easy.
I haven't used a Nexus phone, but I am not sure why a third party app would restore better on Nexus and not on Samsung. If so, thats a criticism of Samsung, not of Apple.
I tried Kies, but it seems to be broken in the current iteration.