Use of alloc init instead of new

There are a bunch of reasons here: http://macresearch.org/difference-between-alloc-init-and-new

Some selected ones are:

• new doesn't support custom initializers (like initWithString)
• alloc-init is more explicit than new

General opinion seems to be that you should use whatever you're comfortable with.

Very old question, but I've written some example just for fun — maybe you'll find it useful ;)

#import "InitAllocNewTest.h"

@implementation InitAllocNewTest

+(id)alloc{
    NSLog(@"Allocating...");
    return [super alloc];
}

-(id)init{
    NSLog(@"Initializing...");
    return [super init];
}

@end

In main function both statements:

[[InitAllocNewTest alloc] init];

and

[InitAllocNewTest new];

result in the same output:

2013-03-06 16:45:44.125 XMLTest[18370:207] Allocating...
2013-03-06 16:45:44.128 XMLTest[18370:207] Initializing...

+new is equivalent to +alloc/-init in Apple's NSObject implementation. It is highly unlikely that this will ever change, but depending on your paranoia level, Apple's documentation for +new appears to allow for a change of implementation (and breaking the equivalency) in the future. For this reason, because "explicit is better than implicit" and for historical continuity, the Objective-C community generally avoids +new. You can, however, usually spot the recent Java comers to Objective-C by their dogged use of +new.

Frequently, you are going to need to pass arguments to init and so you will be using a different method, such as [[SomeObject alloc] initWithString: @"Foo"]. If you're used to writing this, you get in the habit of doing it this way and so [[SomeObject alloc] init] may come more naturally that [SomeObject new].

One Short Answere is:

1. Both are same. But
2. 'new' only works with the basic 'init' initializer, and will not work with other initializers (eg initWithString:).