[jodrellblank]

You know what else Apple went out of their way to add? The ability for a web developer to disable the zooming feature!

Implementing a complete specification isn't "going out of your way", it's very much in your way. It's also not saying you endorse every feature therein. (From a quick search, this appears to be a part of CSS specifications: http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-device-adapt/#the-lsquouser-zoom... ). Creating features from scratch is going out of your way. And creating features which allow you to zoom in on any site feels like a strong endoresement that zooming in is generally useful.

Take a look at Twitter's Bootstrap. It has a variety of different responsive design levels, not just one at 320px. Great example of how a design can fit many different devices.

More sites aren't designed well than sites which are designed well. I'd rather put my moment by momnent usability of something ahead of the designer's musing about what "should be more usable" any day. And the abuse of such a thing is to disable zoom for the designer's sense of aesthetics over the user's sense of usability, and I suggest that happens much more than the designer using it to increase usability. And that's a trade-off I dislike having to deal with.

[ceejayoz]

It's a proposed part of the CSS spec because Apple created the viewport meta tag. I'd call that "creating features from scratch". Go on, find an example of the viewport tag prior to the implementation in iOS.