Can someone help explain the difference between Class, Instance, and Object, I am having trouble differentiating them.

Craig, think of a class as a pattern. The standard analogy is a cookie cutter. Just as a cookie cutter can be used to make cookies, so a class can be used to make objects, aka instances of the class.

Here's an example. You use a Circle class to create circle objects: Circle c1 = Circle(radius: 23). Here The type or class is Circle, the name of the Circle object is c1, the second Circle(23) is a call to the init() method, and that method takes one parameter, the circle's radius. If you do this Circle c2 = Circle(radius: 5) you have a second Circle object, or a second instance of the Circle class. The two objects have different memory locations, and different radiuses.

As you might have guessed, String is a class and can be used to create String objects. You can do this:

let x = String("xxx")
x.characters.count  //displays 3

Although there is a shortcut way of creating Strings: let x = "xxx", which does the same thing as above. In both cases a String object x is created. The first way explicitly calls the String init() method. The second calls it implicitly.

Note: later you will find that things get a bit more interesting with structs, enums, protocols, etc. But for now bottom line, is that an object is an instance of a class, and classes are used to create objects.