While I was nosing around the Adobe Updater software (just getting to the program), I notices that it was using the boost thread library. Boost is a collection of peer-reviewed, portable C++ libraries. They have a threads library that works for several several platforms, helping hiding some of the yuckiness of the platform specific issues (and believe me there are quite a few).
[Listening to: Comedy in Music, Part II, Requests (a-j) – Victor Borge – Live (!) (14:25)]