I like that it's open source now, but until they remove the need to mark certain references as weak or unknown, it still just feels like Apple doesn't get modern languages. Until the automatic memory management is more automatic, I will avoid swift if I can. I know many will say it is "not a big deal", but that is not true. It is an extra thing the developer needs to keep track of and to get right if they want to prevent bugs in their code. It makes programming more stressful and less fun. It is something that is very easy make a mistake with. It is a step backwards from other technologies. I know ARC is supposed to be faster than other automatic memory management techniques, but that is just an excuse. Yes, lower performance could be a problem with fully automatic memory management. But problems were meant to be solved, not dumped onto the users of your language. I'm sure it is possible to get it fast enough for most projects. There should at least be a compiler option to enable fully automatic memory management for projects that don't need that extra bit of speed. Computers, including mobile devices, are getting faster and faster. This is especially true for the iPhone and iPad.