There’s an interesting thread over on the apple forums about the ongoing problem of /mac’s gallery performance.

The gallery is a great, easy way to upload your photos and video to your .mac space. Once there, the software creates a web page around them, with interactive functions making it just like iPhoto in a browser !

The problem with all this is it doesn’t work. The speed is awful, especially if you’re unlucky enough to be using IE6. The problem seems t mainly affect European users, with some US based ones thrown in for good measure. Have a gander at the thread to see just how bad it can be.

Quoted from a post by Terence Heaford:

Here is a comparision of my Mac at home vs. my PC at work.

PC numbers in brackets.

Open Gallery Front Screen in 10 seconds (35 seconds).

Open album with 39 images in grid, 13 seconds (40 seconds).

Click on slideshow button:
1st image shows in 3 seconds (20 seconds).
2nd image shows in 2 seconds (15 seconds).
From this point on all images stream very well with virtually no delay on both the Mac and PC. In fact the PC performs slightly better streaming the images. I think that is due to our fast network although the streaming of slideshow images on my home Mac is satisfactory.

At the end of the slideshow click to remove slideshow to go back the grid screen.
This takes 3 seconds (50 seconds). For some reason the Gallery reloads the thumbnails.

There is clearly something wrong with Gallery performance on a PC. Unfortunately we are still using Internet Explorer 6 because our IT department will not allow Internet Explorer 7 as it conflicts with our sytem somewhere.

However, Apple state it will work with Internet Explorer 6 but clearly it does not.

I think it’s safe to say, something aint right !

Anyone else with this issue is encouraged to use Apple’s problem reporting channels to highlight the problem further.