macOS Objective C Help - Encoding

[Cromulent]

It really is quite simple. What I see you doing that is making it confusing is that you declare ivars in the interface context scope (within the braces) and then declare the same variable with @property. The @property declaration creates an ivar, @synthesize creates the accessors, so for clarity and conciseness, I would put the ivar declaration either within the interface context scope or in a @property statement, but not both (why be redundant?).

Technically you can only use @property in 64 bit apps. In 32 bit apps you require both the ivar and the @property declaration according to the Cocoa Fundamentals Guide.

Scroll down a bit in the following link to see the note that I have quoted below (it is in the "Taking Advantage of Declared Properties" section).

http://developer.apple.com/library/....html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40002974-CH5-SW32

Note: As shown in this and subsequent code examples, a property in a 32-bit process must be backed by an instance variable. In a program with a 64-bit address space, properties do not have to be backed by instance variables.