In a way he is right saying that zooming a picture is unintuitive because there has been nothing like it before. Other controls like moving the image around is completely intuitive with the physical equivalent.

I don’t want to do a pitch for the iPhone, but the commercials weren’t intended to give a frame of reference when using the device; they were used to illustrate how straightforward the UI worked, and as a good secondary byproduct, it explained the more high level gestures. iPhone’s UI is intuitive by any definition; from sliding to unlock, to using the phone or listening to music. I’ve never had to explain anything to my mom apart from some seriously deep configuration that’s an edge usage case.

As a word and concept it simply misleads and causes pointless arguments since people should be saying “it is familiar and logical to our intended audience” but instead assume if it is “intuitive” to them, then that applies universally, as if it were a feature of the device or interface itself, rather than a facet of a particular users interaction with the UI.

This article goes into even greater depth on what makes a design feel “intuitive”:
http://www.uie.com/articles/design_intuitive/

Intuitive \In*tu”i*tive\, a. [Cf. F. intuitif.]

1. Seeing clearly; as, an intuitive view; intuitive vision.

2. Knowing, or perceiving, by intuition; capable of knowing without deduction or reasoning.

(http://www.dictionary.net/intuitive)

So, given that definition, I agree that the map pinch isn’t intuitive in the strictest sense of the word. My experience in handing my iPhone to people confirms that they they’re highly unlikely to figure it out on their own.

I’m not sure, by that definition, I agree that intuitive means familiar. I would agree that the familiar is quite often the basis for intuition (e.g.: I intuitively know that round knobs are for turning because I turned them every time I’ve encountered them before), but I would maybe extend it to say that intuition is the ability to understand the slightly unfamiliar based on past experience. We’ve all seen paper maps (or photos), so we intuitively understand what they are. Pinching (or anti-pinching) on them doesn’t do a whole heck of a lot :)

To add to the list of ways people confuse the word: it often gets used as a synonym for “natural”. I’ve heard lots of comments that all kinds of UIs feel “natural” and “intuitive”, almost like B is a $5 version of A. The funny thing about the pinch: once you’ve shown it to people they’re all up in your iPhone pinchin’ on stuff. It’s like they were born to pinch but no one had ever shown them how. So I would say it’s a very natural interaction, even if it’s not one that it’s necessarily intuitive.

One more thought before I’m forced to turn this into my own blog post: there are a bunch of iPhone interaction that are quite intuitive. I observed a number of first time iPhone, users early after the first release before they had been subjected to the millions in marketing. Most of them turned the phone to landscape or figured out the swipe back/next without any prompting. Maybe pinch is a more advanced gesture that becomes discoverable as a result of mastery of the simpler ones? In that case, does it become intuitive after a frame of reference has been established?