>> It's a perfectly viable business reason.
>
> No it's not. I guess you need a "business" scenario to wrap your head
> around the idiocy.
>
> Here you go:
>
> Imagine at Blizzard one morning, "Hey guys, we're not going to be able
> to use function pointers on the new Diablo III like we had planned to
> do, the new hires down the hall don't understand them very well so
> just don't use them, OK?"

That's not quite the situation. Finding good developers isn't easy, so
lots of companies will go for "acceptable" ones, who are less likely to
know of __autoloads existence. Hence, using __autoload is unwise.

--
Richard Heyes
Employ me:
http://www.phpguru.org/cv