Vundle is even better than Pathogen IMO. It takes away the need to manage git submodules, in favor of just creating a text file that defines your plugins, Bundler style. Removing plugins from your setup is MUCH cleaner.
Also, Vundle has a nice interface to manage installation/removal of new plugins (BundleSearch, BundleInstall, BundleClean, etc.). Pathogen is more of a 'do it yourself' approach, while Vundle tries to be a complete suite a la Aptitude.
And to be fair to tpope, Vundle is something that clearly came along later, looking to refine the experience that Pathogen established.
Vundle is a minor but very welcome improvement on Pathogen, while Pathogen was a monsterous improvement on the painful Vim plugin management of before.
I too am a big fan of tpope Vim plugins, and Vundle is the first plugin that I've ever used to replace one of his with. So now I don't have Pathogen but I have a Vundle file that says "tpope" all over it. :)
It seems like the current Vundle version does not play well with .vimrc under version control. That’s why I like Pathogen more, since I can simply insert the bundles as Git submodules into .vim/bundle. (Submodule support for Vundle is already on the way, there are some pull requests on GitHub.)