This is exactly the kind of unintuitive behavior that he was complaining about.
Here's an analogy. Svn is a horse and git is a car. You can imagine all these horse-riders (and there are tons of them) sitting around in a bar saying to each other "these new cars? What is up with them? It makes no sense that you change 'gears' and push pedals to stop and go! I just want to <insert whatever you do to ride a horse> and I'll get to my destination!" -- Well, yea, horses work fine a lot of the time. But it's 2010 (1910? :)) and I have more eclectic needs in my change management. I'm willing to invest some time in learning it just like I was willing to invest time into learning vim, or Erlang, or anything else of value.