the iOS framework lacks a built-in queue The convention for this sort of thing is to use an NSArray, inserting at position 0 to enqueue and removing the last o

the iOS framework lacks a built-in queue The convention for this sort of thing is to use an NSArray, inserting at position 0 to enqueue and removing the last object to dequeue. The NSArray class is actually written in a way that makes this efficient (for some great analysis see http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/posts/array.html http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/posts/array.html). or a sorted list (as far as I know) For sorted lists, I think you're right, you'd have to do it yourself. The question a Cocoa old-hand might ask would be if you _really_ need it to be always-sorted, or if you can keep your objects in an array, dictionary or set and sort them before using or iterating - or maybe just iterate the collection in a specific order instead of sorting it at all. If you do need to keep it sorted all the time, note that _inserting_ into an NSArray is also more efficient than you might assume. Keeping a sorted NSArray up to date yourself might not be expensive (it would be a bit more complicated than an auto-sorting class though, of course).