I want to emphasize again that it's a language communication issue and not a technical issue and therefore, reading Jones' GC Handbook will not help nor solve the problem. One can thoroughly study that book, and 100% agree with the terminology that "rc is subset of gc", and in the end, still chooses to use the informal "rc != gc" -- because everyone else has been using it that way for a long time.

Also, by mentioning Apple, I may have given the impression that it's specifically "Apple" vs the "correct computer science" proponents. Or, I'm saying Apple is some sort of authority or blessing on loose terminology. No, the informal "rc vs gc" nomenclature has been used for over 30 years which is long before Apple did the GC/ARC flip flop in 2011. It is also before the Jones GC book published in 1996. Examples:

1989: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/reference$20countin...

1994: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.object/fqPmh_1wml...

2002: https://books.google.com/books?id=mGlI6kt6qzYC&pg=PA76&lpg=P...

In other words, the "rc != gc" ship sailed a long time before Apple's documentation and the cited links show how pervasive its usage was across several programming languages.

Ideally, "RC" would have been "RCGC" Ref Counting Garbage Collector, and "GC" would have been "TGC" Tracing Garbage Collector so all subsequent conversations were "RCGC vs TGC" but that's not how history played out. Studying Jones' GC Handbook does not reverse 30+ years of how people informally use terminology.