Hmmm ... so you're thinking in terms of a space elevator, but more horizontal and less spacey? Amirite?

Carriers don't "lose money" when they "subsidize" your cellphone. Carriers use their ability to buy large quantities of phones to gain a price advantage that they can then leverage into convincing rubes ... excuse me, customers, into signing multi-year contracts for voice/text/data plans.

Yes, the phone manufacturer gets paid for the phone, often ahead of time, but your contract is worth considerably more than either the cost of the cellphone or the services that the carrier provides.

Carriers have no incentive to keep you happy once you've signed your contract until such time as your contract runs out. Then they wave another "subsidized phone" and perhaps throw in some inconsequential benefit to get you to renew.

You are a small insignificant part of their customer base and if you become too much of a hassle or too expensive, then they will be just as happy to see you go.

I really hate my cable company, do you want to try another analogy?

It would probably be because most of the other Top 10 languages have been at (or near) the Top 10 for years, while Objective C has jumped up from #39 a year ago.

Here you can see the change in Tiobe's ratings for Objective C over time:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/paperinfo/tpci/Objective-C.html

Compared to other languages like Java:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/paperinfo/tpci/Java.html

Perl:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/paperinfo/tpci/Perl.html

or PHP:

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/paperinfo/tpci/PHP.html

That is a significant change.

Now Tiobe's methodology may be crap overall, but it is measuring a big sea-change ... not a change you'll probably like, but eventually you'll realize that the world rarely goes out of its way to please you.

I think the original comment was a shot at Dan Quayle not McGrew ... for misspelling potatos (Dan Quayle added an "e" to singular potato, mcgrew removed "e" from plural potatoes ... hence, "It's ok Dan, you can use 'Es' this time.").

But it does make it so.

See what you think is a Van Dyke isn't one, if you want to be technical.

The Van Dyke was a goatee plus a waxed, curled moustache. Along the way, the popularity of curled moustaches declined and the term Van Dyke came to mean any goatee with almost any kind of moustache (but no sideburns or other cheek hair). Now, the term for the mock "Van Dyke" (that you favour) has begun to collapse into the generic term goatee, which may or may include a moustache.

And language moves ever forward ... or backwards ... or sideways.

You forgot to include the volcano ash cloud ...