Unnecessary code on Pg 148

I’m confused why this first line is needed in the example on page 148 above the challenge:

NSDate *date = mikey.hireDate; NSLog(@"%@ hired on %@", mikey, date);

The example is how the description method can be overwritten so I understand that. But why was the mikey.hireDate made to be replaced by a new pointer? Seems unnecessary. Couldn’t you just leave it like this since the description method for mikey.hireDate returns the date anyway?

Or was it done just to keep the code looking cleaner?