Well... using the example from the linked article, it could be made equivalent to your Objective-C snippet, provided the optional passed error-object/struct isn't updated only on errors (as the article suggests), but also can be used to find out if an error happened in the first place.

With a suitable modification, the mentioned example would have to be changed from...

    libfoo_widget_container_t container = NULL;
    libfoo_error_details_t error = NULL;
    if (libfoo_create_widgets(12, &container, &error) != libfoo_success) {
       printf("Error creating widgets: %s\n", libfoo_error_details_c_str(error));
       libfoo_error_details_free(error);
       abort(); // goodbye, cruel world!
    }

...to...

    libfoo_widget_container_t container = NULL;
    libfoo_error_details_t error = NULL;

    libfoo_create_widgets(12, &container, &error);
    if (LIBFOO_IS_BAD(error)) {
       printf("Error creating widgets: %s\n", libfoo_error_details_c_str(error));
       libfoo_error_details_free(error);
       abort(); // goodbye, cruel world!
    }

where LIBFOO_IS_BAD() would be a macro or inline function inspecting the error object/struct, and might be something like

    #define LIBFOO_IS_BAD(error)   ((error) && (error)->errno != 0)

Cutting out the cruft, it's basically what you had suggested to pre pretty Objective-C style ;-)

    /* your example */
    NSError* error = nil;
    [object doSomething: foo error: &error];
    if(error){

    }

    /* article */
    libfoo_error_details_t error = NULL;
    libfoo_create_widgets(12, &container, &error);
    if (LIBFOO_IS_BAD(error)) {

    }

EDIT: The linked article already mentions that in the example, error would only be updated if the function returned something unlinke libfoo_success, so one could directly convert to your favourite style keeping these semantics!