turns out we need thread after all, and OSX is a pita

tried stuff i found on forums (eg
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22289423/how-to-avoid-qt-app-exec-blocking-main-thread),
but didn't work (always complains about not being main thread)
Still not clear why calling create doesn't block in ipython, but it
does in main.py
- also implemented a couple more wrappers.