I agree with the general sentiment, but you're not free from all memory management. If I've never learned about it, how do I know when to make something strong vs weak? How about bridging from CF types?
ARC is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't free newcomers from ever learning about memory management.
Apple's ARC documentation explains how to deal with those kinds of things. It's as accessible to an iOS beginner as retain/release are, perhaps more so. Specifically, regarding strong vs weak, the point is that you are to think about your object graph instead of thinking about memory management.
ARC is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't free newcomers from ever learning about memory management.