[Groxx]

Well yeah. One is compiler-assisted reference counting and the other is garbage collection. Reference counting is nearly always faster than garbage collecting, and Apple has generally been a bit obsessed on speed, for however much that has gained them or lost them.

Their wording there is suspect though. Interesting - thanks for the link!

[chalst]

Reference counting is generally quite a bit slower overall than stop-the-world garbage collection.

I guess you meant latency, where reference counting generally has better latency than incremental garbage collection.