So a number of things. With LLVM, Objective-C has become way stricter and picky about types. To get away with calling a random method on an object ObjC knows do

So a number of things. With LLVM, Objective-C has become way stricter and picky about types. To get away with calling a random method on an object ObjC knows doesn't have it, you have to explicitly cast it. This was necessary to ensure ARC would work correctly. Although, yeah, in the dictionary example it just returns an id so its up to you to type it correctly. That being said, that doesn't have much to do with what I'm talking about because here I'm referring specifically to NSValue -> primitive type conversion. Just about every compiler is super picky about this. Try doing this in Xcode: void * p; int x = p; It will get angry, it knows p is a pointer and you want an int. Couple this with Xcode also knowing whether something is just id or actually an NSValue, and you can then do this: id something = [object returnIdSoYouDontWhatItReallyIs]; int somethingAsInt = something; // error, something can't be converted to int However, here it should be fine: NSValue * something = [object returnsSomethingMysterious]; int somethingAsInt = something; // OK, replace with something.intValue Of course, you'd probably want some sort of explicit unboxing operator (to match the explicit boxing operator @()), because sometimes you do want to do crazy things like cast a id to an int. Maybe something like: @^()