Why @autoreleasepool?

Question

Under ARC, we can no longer call autorelease. Essentially, the entire notion of auto release pool is out the window. Why then, do we need the @autoreleasepool directive?

Answer 1

In fact the notion of retain/release/autorelease is still present when using ARC. The difference is that the compiler adds them for you. This means that the concept of an autorelease pool is still relevant and you might want to use them in exactly the same situations as before.