Don't get me wrong, I am not saying it is the Camera's fault.

The behavior I would have consider "intuitive", as a novice, is to offer me an option: wait for the camera to complete all automatic adjustments when the button is half pressed and push the button down only after the OK beep is heard, or not wait for the beep and go all teh way down with the button before the beep, taking a "wrong" picture.

Having a different expectation, I felt frustrated when, in "wrong" exposure/aperture conditions, I could just not push the button and "see what happened", which was my approach to begin with. Of course, I resorted to manual mode then.