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I am having trouble understanding a line in one of the tutorials, the UITableView Fruit tutorial to be specific. 

The following line confounds me:

FruitAppDelegate *appDelegate = (FruitAppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication ] delegate];

I don't have a strong understanding of delegates, which is my first problem.  I realize this gives me access to the FruitAppDelegate, but I don't know why.

The questions I have:

1. I imported the header “FruitAppDelegate.h”. why cant I just reference the fruit objects in my code if i know about them?  Can't I just type:

FruitAppDelegate.fruits.name  

to get access to the name? if not, why not?

2. Why am I talking to UIApplication?  I'm guessing it has magic access to all objects in the application?  If not, what does it have access to?  I looked at the documentation but couldn't figure out it's use.

3. Since I don't understand the message to UIApplication, I also don't understand the delegate message wrapped around it.  what is the interior message returning and what does the delegate message accomplish.

Thanks for any info, I like to make sure I understand all the code I come across.

Thanks Brandon, that clears up a lot.

I am definitely mixing up my class definitions and instantiated objects….now I see that.

Your definition of UIApplication is much more clear than what I was reading in the documentation.

Just one final clarification… does UIApplication only have access to objects created in FruitAppDelegate.m? 

I did do Java and C++ several years ago, but recently I have been mostly working in C, Verilog, and MATLAB, so my OOP is a little rusty.   I'm mixing my OOP refresh with learning a new language on a new platform, so I am running into some growing pains.  Your tutorials are definitely helping,  so thanks again.