isEqual doesn’t always work for NSIndexPath? What can I use in its place?

As of iOS 5 you can just use isEqual: (see comments)

Try [indexPath1 compare: indexPath2] == NSOrderedSame.

Maybe you found a bug in NSIndexPath. If you try to create a new NSIndexPath with a path that already exists you should get that one instead. So isEqual: probably just compares the pointers and not the actual indices stored.