It’s astounding to me how bad the menu systems are for most cameras. It’s a common negative quality I see in reviews for Nikon, Sony. Samsung, Olympus, and Panasonic. I haven’t read any Canon reviews so I’ll have to take your word for it that they’re an outlier.

As someone with Canon, Nikon, Panasonic and Pentax cameras I'd say Panasonic have the best menus out there. Their app for remotely controlling cameras is also excellent. Panasonic really seems to understand software and interface design.

Their Depth from Defocus and subject tracking technology is also pretty astounding (certainly for stills, though GH users might grumble about focus 'wobble') and shows that they're a technology company in the camera space and can leverage that to make their cameras do things that classical camera companies have difficulty grasping or rely on costly hardware solutions to overcome.

Does Canon do the "U" modes like some Nikon cameras?

I know people give Ken Rockwell a lot of shit, and often with reason, but he's so so right that those are a game changer. I don't have to think, I can just move to "U1" or "U2" for my most common shooting scenarios and I'm done. There's also the customizable "Fn" button that gives quick access to a custom menu. Nikon cameras that feature this have easily the best UI in the industry.

Canon came up with that first with the 5D back in 2005, and it came to the semipro lineup with the 40D, and the full pro with the 1Dx. Currently, everything from the 80D and up has this.

Nikon only has had it on their midrange models starting with the D7000. The D6x0 and D750 have it, but the full pro style cameras don't have it.

Not familiar with Nikon but it sounds like this is the custom settings mode. This exist in the Canon world as Custom shooting mode. My very old 40D has C1/C2/C3 which are exactly for this. I agree theyre extremely useful as I stay on these mode 90%+ of the time.

Nikon pro bodies don't have a custom setting selector on the top but has five 'profiles' that you can select using the i button, each bank contains a full config.

I don't really use them except for having a 'basic' setup that reenables focus by half pressing the shutter button in case I hand my camera to someone who doesn't use back button focus.

Yes, they do have all that (at least on some models)

I agree with those two reasons, and add a third: I've got smallish hands for a man, and the canon-bodies always felt better suited to me for that reason.

I have large hands and so I've always had to put battery grips on mine, but as that improves the balance with bigger lenses I never minded :D

I have the 70-200 f/2.8 which is a damn heavy lens, and when I use it I almost always put a grip on it just to make it easier to weild.

Even in a studio you can feel it later on when you've been pointing it around all day!