Hmm, turns out I am wrong about the second point. Obj-C does not store the refcount in the pointer address: https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2013-09-27

Hmm, turns out I am wrong about the second point. Obj-C does not store the refcount in the pointer address: https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2013-09-27-arm64-and-you.html https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2013-09-27-arm64-an... They store it in isa field. Still, as long as you also call any virtual method of the object (or due to cache lines, use any field), it will still be pretty fast.