Apple has released another app to their own App Store this week with MobileMe Gallery. The only question is, “What took them so long?”

It’s been more than a year and a half since MobileMe debuted (or rather, transitioned from the .Mac service), alongside iPhone OS 2.0 and the App Store itself. During that time, MobileMe customers had to use Mobile Safari to show off their gallery photos, which wasn’t always an elegant solution.

That changed this week, with the debut of Apple’s own MobileMe Gallery app. Now, MobileMe subscribers can easily view their gallery photos and movies on their iPhone or iPod touch.

Of course, since it’s tied so closely to the MobileMe service, a subscription is required. When the app opens for the first time it requires your MobileMe username and password in order to see the albums you’ve published there. Once inside, however, you can easily add a friend’s MobileMe username from your contacts (or type it in yourself) and you can see their publicly shared photos, too.

The My Gallery page of the app features a scrolling sampler at the top of the app to give you easy access to your recent photos. Simply select an album with a tap and then flick back and forth through photos, pinch to zoom or rotate your device to landscape view, complete with comments, where applicable.

Best of all, MobileMe Gallery automatically stores photos you’ve already viewed so you can view them again, even without a network connection. You can also easily share a link to an album, right within the app itself.

For whatever reason, movies shot with our iPhone 3GS and posted to a MobileMe album wouldn’t play from the app, throwing up an error that they couldn’t be played on our device -- and judging from early user comments, we’re not alone. We’re guessing Apple still has some bugs to work out. Personally, we’d like to see this app’s functionality built into the included Photos app -- or at least a consolidated MobileMe app with all of the features under one roof.

Otherwise, MobileMe Gallery is a nice addition to the $99 per year ($149 per year for Family Pack) subscription service. It’s available now on the App Store as a free download and requires iPhone OS 3.1 or later, as well as a MobileMe subscription.