iPhoto 9.3.2 generating high resolution thumbnails

I am in the process of migrating to a new machine, one with the awesome Retina display! Migration has always been a slow and painful process consuming 3-4 weekends. Most of the time is wasted in dealing with undocumented frustration, where things are subtly changed around enough to break everything else that depends upon it.

My recent annoyance has been with iPhoto 9.3.2. Granted that iPhoto 9.3.2 has been a welcome update. Apple has finally started paying attention to non-iOS software for a change. iPhoto is optimized for systems with the Retina display. Upon first launch, it prompted me to "generate high resolution thumbnails". I kept putting off the task for quite a while, but the nagging was quite persistent and I finally gave in.

To my utter frustration, a simple process like thumbnail generation takes more than 24 hours! Here's the progress meter after letting it run for 26+ hours:

I honestly hope it doesn't report an error at the end of this lengthy process :) Apple, have you really tested your software with real-life photo libraries? After about 9 years of iLife, it is expected that users will have a large accumulation of photographs. My photo library has more than 70,000 pictures. Spending 26 hours for generating thumbnails is ridiculous. That too on a 4 core i7 processor, with 16GB of RAM and an SSD hard drive.

Apple is going the Microsoft way indeed.