I hope people don't mind me posting this bit of code to the list, but I hope it will be of some use to others and would also be interested to hear if the technique has any problems which I've not foreseen. Ruby has its own means of implementing the observer pattern, but as Key Value Observing (KVO) is so pervasive in cocoa, it would be good if it was easy to use. The module is an attempt at making KVO a bit more pleasant to use in macruby. The ideas have been adapted/stolen from here: https://gist.github.com/153676 The following is an example of how to have a block of code executed asynchronously every time a property of an instance variable changes self.add_observer_for_key_path('person.first_name', async:true) do |object,change| object.do_expensive_calculation #will not block main thread end A concern I do have is that the object which wants to receive KVO notifications holds an array of Observer objects. These Observer objects hold a reference to the object receiving the KVO notifications. Is this going to cause havoc with garbage collection? module KVO class Observer require 'dispatch' attr_reader :observee, :path def initialize(object, path, async, block, opts=0) @observee = object @path = path @async = async @block = block @observee.addObserver(self, forKeyPath:path, options:opts, context:nil) end def observeValueForKeyPath(path, ofObject:object, change:change, context:context) if @async Dispatch::Job.new { @block.call(object, change) } else @block.call(object, change) end end def cancel_observation @observee.removeObserver(self, forKeyPath:@path) end end def add_observer_for_key_path(path, async:async, &block) (@_observers_array_ ||= []) << Observer.new(self, path, async, block) end def add_observer_for_key_path(path, async:async, options:opts, &block) (@_observers_array_ ||= []) << Observer.new(self, path, async, block, opts) end def remove_observer_for_key_path(path) observer = @_observers_array_.find {|o| o.path == path && o.observee == self} if @_observers_array_ @_observers_array_.delete(observer) and observer.cancel_observation if observer end end