Should IBOutlets be strong or weak under ARC?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7678469/should-iboutlets-be-strong-or-weak-under-arc

From a practical perspective, in iOS and OS X outlets should be defined as declared properties. Outlets should generally be weak, except for those from File’s Owner to top-level objects in a nib file (or, in iOS, a storyboard scene) which should be strong. Outlets that you create will therefore typically be weak by default, because:

• Outlets that you create to, for example, subviews of a view controller’s view or a window controller’s window, are arbitrary references between objects that do not imply ownership.

• The strong outlets are frequently specified by framework classes (for example, UIViewController’s view outlet, or NSWindowController’s window outlet).

  @property (weak) IBOutlet MyView *viewContainerSubview;
  @property (strong) IBOutlet MyOtherClass *topLevelObject;

简单的说，如果IBOutlet对象是nib/sb scene的拥有者（File’s owner）所持有的对象，那么很显然拥有者必须“拥有”对象的指针，因此属性应设置为strong。而其他的IBOutlet对象的属性需要设置为weak，因为拥有者并不需要“拥有”他们的指针。举例来说，UIViewController的view属性是strong，因为controller要直接拥有view。而添加到view上的subviews，作为IBOutlet只需要设置为weak就可以了，因为他们不是controller直接拥有的。直接拥有subviews的是controller的view，ARC会帮助管理内存。