Properties are so confusing to me. Can anyone explain to me how you can replace the setter and getter method with @prop?

When using properties, a setter, a getter, and an ivar (instance variable) are created behind the scenes. When you declare a property

@property (nonatomic, strong) NSArray *someArray

a getter method called someArray, a setter method called setSomeArray and an ivar called _someArray are all created behind the scenes for you when its compiled.

You can use [self someArray] or self.someArray to use the getter method of someArray to access that ivar, the setter method [self setSomeArray] or self.someArray to use the setter method to set that ivar, or you can use _someArray to access that ivar directly.

You can also override the default setters and getter that get created and implement your own functionality. If you are overriding the setter and getter methods for a property, you need to access the ivar directly inside that method

Basically getters and setters are helpful when you want to run some code whenever the variable is get or set, like sending a notification to your app whenever a certain variable is changed and stuff like that.