There are a few apps that claim to ease UV mapping , but in truth there is no way round spending the time to unwrap the UV's properly, Unwrapping in Maya can be a little awkward at first to get to grips with but the real skill in getting the texture maps to look good and not stretch is practice and learing the best angles to map from and where to hide any seams (joins) to avoid stretches and mismatches.
In short yes UV mapping and unwrapping can be a pain but we all have to suffer it ..sorry .