Has anyone else had this issue?

My app runs absolutely smooth as butter when I'm running it in debug mode. Even if I run it on my phone after unplugging it, it runs great when compiled in debug mode.

But when I compile it for distribution, then run it (ad-hoc or app store), then it hangs and runs out of memory eventually. Of course, since I can't debug I don't know what the hell is going on.

I solved my own problem. As it turns out, my code did have some issues, but for some reason debug mode is a lot more forgiving of nil objects than distribution modes. Since debugging was out of the question, I had to narrow it down by commenting chunks of code until I found what was causing the hang, each time copying the ad-hoc version to my device. I found that if you set Xcode to your test distribution profile and your device, then "Build and Run", it will put it on your device and launch it, then quit because the debugger won't work. However, you can re-launch it manually on your device and it is the ad-hoc version. Much easier than using iTunes to sync it up every time you compile.

I really wish Apple would make debug mode consistent with distribution modes when it comes to handling nil objects.

It is consistent with handling nil objects.

What you probably did, from the description, is that you used unitialized memory. Running in the debugger, memory allocations are zeroed, but not when running the app stand-alone.