I was thinking the same way you were until a year ago when I spoke to a colleague who has a Droid that got an OTA upgrade to Froyo (2.2)... what a clusterf*ck... he lost battery during the event, it torched his device, and he couldn't even re-flash the firmware, he had to take it into the Verizon store, where they simply replaced it.

All the settings and hacks he put it? Wiped. (Backup is optional in Android... my colleague hadn't done it).

This made me understand why Apple is so old-school when it comes to iPod/iPad sync and upgrades. It's not just the wireless bandwidth, it's about avoiding disastrous edge-cases that ruin customer experience.

A wired sync or upgrade can guarantee backups, power availability and reasonable bandwidth.