Does iOS 5 have garbage collection?

Question

Do I no longer have to worry about memory management iOS 5 onwards? Also, will all programs written for iOS 4 and earlier versions have to be rewritten to allow iOS to manag

Answer 1

Automatic Reference Counting implements automatic memory management for Objective-C objects and blocks, freeing the programmer from the need explicitly insert retains and releases.

You will worry less about memory management. There is public info available on the subject:

• ARC replacing GC? (lists.apple.com)
• Automatic Reference Counting (clang.llvm.org). This is the tech spec on ARC.

If the spec is too harsh to read, in short, you will need to edit the retain/release code to use ARC, but old programs remain compatible. What you shouldn't do is mix both.