I think a separate objective-c runtime was ported to windows by apple for itunes and later safari to work.

If I recall correctly, iTunes was a Carbon application. They ported parts of the Carbon APIs to get it running on Windows.

QuickTime for Windows existed long before then, and Apple ported a bunch of the old Classic Mac Toolbox to Windows as part of that.

IIRC it was actually this Windows port of Toolbox that in some ways laid the foundation for Carbon - i.e. a port of the Toolbox API to what became Mac OS X.

Interesting stuff, I wish there was a way it would get open sourced one day.

Yes, this is correct.

I do remember it had its own font rendering which looked out of place on Windows.

There seem to be bunch of DLLs in iTunes and Safari with familiar names.

Would have been good if someone made bindings for them, it would have been interesting to see what MacOS like stuff could work there, even if it just python bindings.

There is also GNUStep.