Objective-C can sometimes be pretty verbose, yes, but that's a very contrived block example, especially since it doesn't really relate to concurrency in any way

Objective-C can sometimes be pretty verbose, yes, but that's a very contrived block example, especially since it doesn't really relate to concurrency in any way. A more real-world example employing blocks with GCD would be: dispatch_queue_t queue = dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0); dispatch_async(queue, ^{ // do some time-consuming work dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue() ^{ // do stuff on the main thread, like updating UI }); }); That's actually pure C. Typical block usage with Cocoa would be something like: [myArray enumerateObjectsWithOptions:NSEnumerationConcurrent usingBlock:^(id obj, NSUInteger idx, BOOL *stop) { // do something with obj concurrently }];