Editing Reference counting (section)

===Cocoa (Objective-C)===
{{See also|Automatic Reference Counting}}
Apple's [[Cocoa (API)|Cocoa]] and [[Cocoa Touch]] frameworks (and related frameworks, such as [[Core Foundation]]) use manual reference counting, much like [[Component Object Model|COM]]. Traditionally this was accomplished by the programmer manually sending <code>retain</code> and <code>release</code> messages to objects, but [[Automatic Reference Counting]], a [[Clang]] compiler feature that automatically inserts these messages as needed, was added in [[iOS (Apple)|iOS]] 5<ref>[https://developer.apple.com/technologies/ios5/] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110609033837/http://developer.apple.com/technologies/ios5/|date=9 June 2011}}</ref> and [[Mac OS X 10.7]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#releasenotes/MacOSX/WhatsNewInOSX/Articles/MacOSX10_7.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40010355-SW62 |title=Mac Developer Library |publisher=Developer.apple.com |access-date=2015-12-17}}</ref> [[Mac OS X 10.5]] introduced a tracing garbage collector as an alternative to reference counting, but it was deprecated in [[OS X 10.8]] and removed from the Objective-C [[runtime library]] in [[macOS Sierra]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/17/#objective-c-enhancements|title=OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: the Ars Technica review|last=Siracusa|first=John|date=25 July 2012|at=At section "Objective-C enhancements"|access-date=17 November 2016|work=Ars Technica}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/DeveloperTools/RN-Xcode/Introduction.html|title=Xcode 8 Release Notes|date=27 October 2016|website=Apple Developer|access-date=19 March 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170319065518/https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/DeveloperTools/RN-Xcode/Introduction.html|archive-date=19 March 2017}}</ref> [[iOS]] has never supported a tracing garbage collector.