What is the difference between UIViewController and UITableViewController

So despite the obvious stuff, are there any miracles that UITableViewController takes care of?

Not that I am aware of. As far as I know UITableViewController is mostly a convenience class that can be replaced with your own subclass that adds a few lines of code.

Apple's class documentation pretty much says all that UITableViewController does (and I'm not repeating that here because it may well change in the future). Sometimes, additional information can be gleaned from a class' header file, but in the case of UITableViewController.h the source code comments just repeat what is already in the class docs.

In the end you must decide yourself what you want to replicate in your own subclass. Maybe your project does not need .nib handling? Or none of your table views is editable? So just don't code that...

I believe all of the behavior UITableViewController adds is well defined in the class documentation: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uitableviewcontroller?language=objc

The UITableViewController class creates a controller object that manages a table view. It implements the following behavior:

• If a nib file is specified via the initWithNibName:bundle: method (which is declared by the superclass UIViewController), UITableViewController loads the table view archived in the nib file. Otherwise, it creates an unconfigured UITableView object with the correct dimensions and autoresize mask. You can access this view through the tableView property.

• If a nib file containing the table view is loaded, the data source and delegate become those objects defined in the nib file (if any). If no nib file is specified or if the nib file defines no data source or delegate, UITableViewController sets the data source and the delegate of the table view to self.

• When the table view is about to appear the first time it’s loaded, the table-view controller reloads the table view’s data. It also clears its selection (with or without animation, depending on the request) every time the table view is displayed. The UITableViewController class implements this in the superclass method viewWillAppear:. You can disable this behavior by changing the value in the clearsSelectionOnViewWillAppear property.

• When the table view has appeared, the controller flashes the table view’s scroll indicators. The UITableViewController class implements this in the superclass method viewDidAppear:.

• It implements the superclass method setEditing:animated: so that if a user taps an Edit|Done button in the navigation bar, the controller toggles the edit mode of the table.

All of these are behaviors which should be easy to re-implement if they apply to your specific controller and table view.

In general I have found it preferable to implement these behaviors myself in order to allow for alternate inheritance hierarchies as you noted and because I usually consider setting both the delagate and datasource of a table view to be a view controller a design smell. Those are independent concerns which usually can and should be handled by some other class (e.g. a dedicated data source for a particular model class) rather than bloating a view controller.