I don't remember having an issue with it, just paired my Wiimotes when they were freshly bought and forgot about those sync buttons. The Wii U on the other hand are predominantly there. In the face of the console with a bright red button, in a similar fashion behind the gamepad, or through a wiimote jacket orifice.

I don't like the console one xD

it's meant for women... if you hide it behind the flap like they did on the Wii they don't have the ability to find the small button.. billions of dollars in phone calls and text messages are saved by this..

They should have thought on the market hidding a sync button provides!

Ha ha ha! I didn't think of that.

But no, I don't think it was ever much of an issue.  An easy fix.

In the end, after my experience during the holidays, I have found WiiU's syncing much harder than Wii's.
Seems like the only way to sync is by pairing, the old temporary Wiimote sync using 1+2 didn't work for me.

... no wonder they put those paring sync buttons so visible.

How complicated is this process of pairing...?

I've always remembered Wii-Wiimote sync'ing to be a general pain... Any time someone would bring over their spare wii controllers, the first 10 minutes of the get-together would always be dedicated to some sucker sitting hunched in front of the Wii console, attempting to sync the controllers...

And God save you if you were really only a casual and forgot how to sync after the first hour of owning your Wii. Then they never figured it out. 

Pairing takes some seconds, but let's say the whole process compromises two minutes in total taking into account going to the console, opening the battery cover, pressing sync button on the controller, a few seconds on the console one, wait&check if it's synced, closing the battery and returning to the couch. I had a Wii and WiiU running side by side since I don't want to do the transfer just yet (want more info on WiiU VC and hopefully WW too), pairing back and forth between them was a pain the first few days. In the end, I just left them paired to the Wii U and temporally synced them to the Wii if someone needed it.

And FYI, the Wii had a temporal syncing option that could have come quite handy with your Wii-Wiimote sync problems. Just had to press home->config controllers->new connection and press 1&2. Although I think this was meant to be used as a re-ordering method.

Ps3 uses bluetooth as well, however, I never had to hit any damn sync buttons. Its not hard or really a big deal, but I think it could have a better solution that requires no real effort.

The issue on Wii wasn't on the console, it was having to take off the condom, remove battery plate then sync, then replace all.

Wii U setup was impressively easy, because yeah, syncing and re-syncing was a big annoyance on Wii, and the TV remote setup was more seamless than any TV remote setup i've ever had to do.