While it is inexcusable to do this as a web developer, there is a layout bug in Mobile Safari to which this is the easiest and sometimes only solution. The designers aren't disabling zooming because they hate people who zoom, just because they're inconsiderate of them.
What is more annoying is that using an Android device, which doesn't have this bug, you suddenly can't zoom either. Now that this is fixed in iOS, it will take a long while for sites to re-enable it. It's very unfortunate that web developers needed to disable features on all platforms to work around a bug in one.
Thanks. I think I've run into that before (as a user), but just didn't think about it. Seems better to just make the user zoom back out than to disable zooming altogether, in any case.
