Once you "get" doing AutoLayout you will never want to go back. I'm speaking as a guy who swore up and down to frames. All it takes is doing some adaptive stuff for 3.5, 4, 4.7 and 5.5 inch screens to make you want to jump out your window.

By the time you create a good system to get the frames to work with an adaptive layout, you just implemented a poor man's version of AutoLayout.

Just my $0.02. I think it saves me a lot of time. I try to avoid AutoLayout in IB and just use code, either a third party DSL or apple's own visual format language.