It's the difference between a language that trusts you not to be a fool, and a language that assumes no one should ever be allowed to use dynamic runtime features.
I've enjoyed my time with Objective-C very much. For consumer coding, I think it's very close to the safety/expressiveness sweet spot.
Agreed. When I first started out I never could have guessed it would become my favorite language. Apple did a lot of great things during my tenure writing ObjC - GCD and ARC are probably the best. I couldn't believe how easy it was to write performant code, both for powerful desktops and power-starved mobile devices.
It was the first place (pre-ARC) that I learned to manage my own memory, and the first (pre-GCD) that I learned to be as safe as possible in a multi-threaded environment.
If in fact Swift is the death-knell of Objective-C, I will be sad. I've written C and C++ and Python and Go and Scheme and Lisp and on and on (Java, C#...) and it will remain one of my favorites for years to come.
I've enjoyed my time with Objective-C very much. For consumer coding, I think it's very close to the safety/expressiveness sweet spot.