The whole intuition thing is rather questionable. You learn how things work and then you get used to them. It doesn't matter much whether it's an apple icon or a start button. Neither shouts "shutdown!".
It's much more important how much work frequently repeated actions take once you know them. No keyboard shortcut can ever be intuitive in the sense you could have suspected what it does without learning about it. But it's quick and you can remember it. That's what counts.
Are regular expressions intuitive? No, but just imagine you had to do pattern matching with a language full of very intuitive words, like SQL or COBOL say :)
I agree. In a lot of cases it's a mistake to cater to inexperienced users by making your GUI 'intuitive'. The bulk of your users are intermediates and power users. A user interface should cater to those people and gently nudge beginners in the same direction.
The old word interface (not the ribbon) actually did a pretty good job in this. Beginners used the menubar to do things. The options where accompanied by icons ("ooh, that's the same as the one on the iconbar.") and keyboard shortcuts ("What happens if I press Ctrl - S?"). The user interface doesn't get in the way of power users and teaches beginners and intermediate users.
Yeah, this is certainly an interesting topic in UI design. When Microsoft had the problem of people not knowing what to do when their computer started up, they relabeled "system" to "start" counterintuitively rather than building a progressive disclosure system into Windows. It may have been better to put a little hovering popup bubble that pointed towards the system icon and said "Click here to start" the first few times you started up (or until user testing showed people had learned what to do).
In later versions of windows, they had a whole window with tons of options pop up at every single startup. In Vista, the window has useless computer information, like how much RAM you have. They not only confuse beginners, but they punish intermediate and advanced users until they find the little checkbox that says not to start it every time.
The first time I sat down in front of an Xbox 360, I had to be informed that holding down the (X) button on the gamepad turned on the system. And then later on, that holding it down brought up a menu to shut it off.
The Wii remote has a Power button, in the same place as the power button on my TV remote control. No explanation required.
It's much more important how much work frequently repeated actions take once you know them. No keyboard shortcut can ever be intuitive in the sense you could have suspected what it does without learning about it. But it's quick and you can remember it. That's what counts.
Are regular expressions intuitive? No, but just imagine you had to do pattern matching with a language full of very intuitive words, like SQL or COBOL say :)