In chapter 3, the author has us declare the following property:

Why declare this as a property of the controller? The text field is already a member of the view and can be accessed from the controller code. Is this a stylistic preference or does it have some functional value that I am missing?

There are a few useful discussions concerning IBOutlets as properties here
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...etain-iboutlet
and here
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...236985#1236985

The book program is a simple example, so there is not going to be a problem, but using accessors is generally a good idea to provide clarity about memory management. Also, as the use of views and their associated subviews becomes more sophisticated there will likely be times when alterations will be done programmatically (i.e. addition/removal of fields or buttons). Correctly used setters and getters minimize the chance for memory leaks.

Bob

Thanks, thepianoguy. I've been following various simple examples trying to get my brain wrapped around XCode and iOS development; the link you provided will help.