Reference counted memory management always involves some level of manual memory management. That's why garbage collection exists, because it's not really possible to get full coverage with ref-counting. Thanks for the education lesson though.
Personally, I think Delphi is for cutters.
dynamic arrays are reference counted
interfaces are reference counted (mostly for doing com stuff, however I've seen some examples of people trying to use interfaces as a cheap/dirty "i don't have to think about it" memory management tool, badly)
everything else is managed by yours truly
please enlighten us as to what you think Delphi is intended for, and what the standard kit is actually optimised for