I have been researching Objective C as a part of a class that I am delivering at the AEC and Manufacturing Devcamps being held this week and next.
Objective C is one of several attempts to create an Object Oriented language based off the C programming language constructs (many of us are familiar with other attempts like C++ and Java). Objective C was adopted by NeXT, a bay area based IT company founded by Steve Jobs after he left Apple Inc in the 1980s, as its primary development language. NeXT mainly manufactured proprietary workstations with proprietary hardware, operating system and developer platforms.
In the late 1990s, NeXT was acquired by Apple Inc when then began a multi-year effort to replace its old and aging Mac OS with a new Operating System based on the proprietary NeXT based Operating System. With this came all the tools and trappings of NeXT including Objective C which became the primary language for Mac programming. When Apple Inc started manufacturing mobile devices, it inherited Objective C as its legacy from the Mac programming environment.