Automatic Reference Counting (ARC)

Memory management is crucial in programming. In Objective-C, you once had to manage memory manually, which could lead to errors like memory leaks or crashes.

Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) changed this by automating a lot of the work for you. It's a compiler feature, not a runtime garbage collector.

With ARC, the Xcode compiler automatically adds the necessary memory management code (like retain, release, and autorelease calls) into your app during compilation.

This means you no longer write these calls yourself. The compiler ensures objects are kept alive as long as they're needed and released when they're not.