They do ship it and I’ve seen many Xperia Z’s around peoples hands. I’ve seen them in London, Paris and in Amsterdam. Lots of ads for it throughout Europe. Just because they don’t care much about the US doesn’t mean they are not doing it right in other places…
I think the thing you got wrong is that you can do many customisations on Android without rooting, while in iOS you must jailbreak do get any customisation done. So you can do it in Android in a headache free way without worrying about warranty etc. And there’s always defaults and intents…
About iTunes being user friendly… Erm, no. I have helped SO many people to deal with iTunes to sync their iDevices to know that thing is far from user friendly. Even I struggle with it from time to time, and I consider myself an experienced user.
But I get what you mean. And yes I agree with you. AirDroid is awesome and I’ve always used it!