Except apple advises you not to use reference counting when trying to debug. So when reference counting doesn't work, you still have to go back and manually count the references yourself...
Apple doesn't advise developers to avoid ref counting, it advises them to avoid using -retainCount. -retainCount is a weak debugging tool, at best. It doesn't take into account autorelease pools, to start, and any framework-specific memory management is ignored. Its use is discouraged for good reason.
For better tools, check out Instruments, MallocDebug or leaks. Or read Apple's Memory Usage Performance Guidelines, specifically the "Finding Memory Leaks" section. [1] Apple's Technical Note TN2124 "Mac OS X Debugging Magic" even has, in the Cocoa section, an example of how -retainCount can be misleading and confusing. [2]
Nowhere does Apple advise Cocoa developers to avoid ref-counting. Cocoa's ref-counting/GC'd memory management system is considered a huge advantage for the platform.
Are you mixing up garbage collection and reference counting? I can understand a suggestion to turn off garbage collection if you want to debug a non-garbage-collected, reference counted piece of code. Otherwise, a link to documentation which describes what you are talking about would clarify things.
