True, but tuning forks are harder to tune against than an electronic tuner. You get better, faster results with an electronic tuner, especially for a newbie.

Having hung around a lot of music stores in my time, I've watched many parents come in to buy their kid his first guitar. They figure it's like a pocket calculator: If you use a calculator all the time, your math skills will slack off. They think it's better for the kid to start out using a tuning fork or pitch pipe and then learn how to tune the instrument relative to itself. They think that an electronic tuner is somehow "cheating" and preventing the kid from having a proper ear for tuning.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, actually.

One thing that a newbie should learn as early as possible is how to hear what a properly-tuned instrument sounds like in his hands. The closer to pitch-perfect the guitar is, the better ear he'll develop and the more easily he'll be able to learn musical theory and harmony. And the more likely he'll be to recognize an out-of-tune instrument when he hears one. The skill to relative-tune his instrument can come later-- buy the kid the electronic tuner *now*.

Especially considering that the intonation on many "cheap" beginner guitars is so bad that relative-tuning becomes an exercise in frustration and compromise...