Well, if you compare Xcode with Visual Studio or Eclipse, I'd say Xcode is a lot easier to use. The UI is a lot more streamlined, much less buttons for example. And I wonder if you've used Xcode back when it was called Project Builder. In my experience Project Builder also had a more complex UI than Xcode. But if you're looking for a good alternative to Xcode, perhaps AppCode is a nice replacement? http://www.jetbrains.com/objc/
Oh it's definitely nicer than VS or Eclipse or NetBeans or the many other IDEs with crap design and poor layouts and even worse stability, but it's still gotten worse over the period of time I've been using it. I'll still use it as it's still significantly better than most IDEs, but I do hope they take some time to refine it again.
I missed Project Builder, it was just slightly before my time so I won't comment too much on that.
