I won't argue too strongly on this, as you're far more knowledgable about it than I am.
However, imo the intention and semantics behind a call like CFMakeCollectable implies a transfer of ownership to an external system. A newbie Apple coder could be forgiven for thinking it would still transfer ownership in RC environments, just to the autorelease pool instead of a collector. In all likelihood this is what happened. An intern got at the code and didn't know the details about GC.
Obviously the point stands that this interpretation is well-documented to be false, but its naming is definitely misleading.
Double edit:
I see from your edit that some of my basic assumptions about CFMakeCollectable were wrong, having never actually worked with it. My bad.
However, imo the intention and semantics behind a call like CFMakeCollectable implies a transfer of ownership to an external system. A newbie Apple coder could be forgiven for thinking it would still transfer ownership in RC environments, just to the autorelease pool instead of a collector. In all likelihood this is what happened. An intern got at the code and didn't know the details about GC.
Obviously the point stands that this interpretation is well-documented to be false, but its naming is definitely misleading.
Double edit: I see from your edit that some of my basic assumptions about CFMakeCollectable were wrong, having never actually worked with it. My bad.