How does this implementation of object inheritance through clone() work?

I am reading kangax's blog on How ECMAScript 5 still does not allow to subclass an array. Here he is using a different approach of subclassing than the normal prototypal construct

BaseClass.prototype = new Superclass();

What he is doing is this :

function clone(obj) {
  function F() { }
  F.prototype = obj;
  return new F();
}

and then set-up inheritance like this:

function Child() { }
Child.prototype = clone(Parent.prototype);

Can someone explain this two part approach of inheritance and what benefits it gives over the simple one liner approach above?

Edit: I understand from the comments that there is now a standard Object.create() that basically solves the same purpose as clone() method but how does this implementation of clone() work ?