As of Mac OS X 10.4.3, NSDocument and NSWindowController seem to have this *almost* fixed. An undocumented class named NSAutounbinder seems to automagically perform an unbind for these two classes -- fixing the reference counted loop for Nib bindings.
This doesn't always work (quitting an application with a document window open that has no unsaved changes results in the document not getting unbound -- work around is to closeAllDocumentsWithDelegate manually on applicationShouldTerminate) and still doesn't fix the problem when the owner is neither an NSDocument nor NSWindowController.
In these "doesn't always work" situations, the NSObjectController fix described above still works.
by Matt Gallagher — Dec 12
This doesn't always work (quitting an application with a document window open that has no unsaved changes results in the document not getting unbound -- work around is to closeAllDocumentsWithDelegate manually on applicationShouldTerminate) and still doesn't fix the problem when the owner is neither an NSDocument nor NSWindowController.
In these "doesn't always work" situations, the NSObjectController fix described above still works.
Just so you know.