Microsoft Max flops

Microsoft released the beta of "Max" today. What is it? Well despite fluffy marketing-speak on their website like...

Microsoft® Codename Max is not like any other product. That's because it's not a product—it's your opportunity to try an exciting new user experience from Microsoft. Today Max lets you make lists of your photos and turn them into beautiful slide shows to share with your family and friends. Tomorrow...who knows?

... it looks and sounds like a photo app. Make that ANOTHER photo app. How many photo apps has Microsoft put out in the last 5 years?

Early user reports aren't positive. Alex Saunders (another ex-Softie) had this to say about his experience:

Installation is a lengthy process.  Downloading Avalon and Indigo takes time.  For me, the process required a reboot, and then failed on restart.  I had to locate the shortcut on my desktop to continue.

Loading the software is slow.  Once loaded, the beautiful UI is not completely intuitive.  You create "lists" of photos to share with others.  Using your passport, you create an account, and then you can share the photos.

Slide shows are beautiful streamed slide shows, with large full colour images quickly rendered, even from a web site.

What’s not to like?

• Well, I mentioned the speed. I run a 2 Ghz Athlon processor with 512M of memory, and an ATI Radeon 9200 video card.  Max grinds my PC to a halt.  If this is the future of Windows, then I will be upgrading every PC in my house.
• Half of my family runs Macintosh.  How do I share photos with them?
• How do I tag photos?  The feature seems non-existant.
• Did I mention that it’s slow?

Final analysis:  Not enough meat on the bone.  It’s very pretty, but both Flickr and Picasa are more functional.

Based on Alec's review and the others I read on Google BlogSearch, I think I'll pass for now.

Comments

[Rob Barac]

I wonder what sort of spin Scoble will put on this?

[Rob Barac]

I wonder what sort of spin Scoble will put on this?

[Mike Peters]

Well, it took a little patience but I had no problems installing it....
And the results are stunning.
As it happens, I am doing some presentations next week and I can use this to run some images during intro etc.. - better than making up a .ppt show... and fantastic quality.. no problems with speed or resource grabbing.
I've got it on a Tosh Tecra M2 (1.7 proc, 768MB RAM).
Give it a go - use your imagination to take it beyond just phot sharing.

[Jonathan Ruckert]

Install process is rather lengthy, required me to uninstall other beta applications before continuing so wasnt rather happy about that, couldnt find the original install when it asked for the reboot either.

But hey after 2 hours of fiddling around i got it there in the end.

[hiojo]

http://jjiang.blogspot.com/2005/09/is-microsoft-max-trying-to-break.html

[Mick Stanic]

Hmm...i think Alex sort of missed the boat on this one...Max is currently a preview of what is going to be possible with Avalon in desktop apps.

Let me see...what else??? It's pre-beta...and it's not meant to be a replacement for Flickr or Picasa...it even uses P2P in the backed to share your photos...oh sorry...I forgot...P2P is "amazing" and "the future" when its done by someone else...just not Microsoft.

Sorry...i just forgot how much ex-softies like picking on MS ;)

Now the points:

Works fine on my Toshiba M200 TabletPC (a bit slow..but once again...it's pre-beta)
Yeah..what about the Mac users...because such a large percentage ofthe world uses a Mac..isn't it like 4% or something???
I'll agree on this one...it should have tagging...though it is designed to share slide shows and not really to be searchable

Final analysis...its a pre-beta app that is very well done and shows the direction we are heading in with Vista very nicely...works for me.

[Cameron Reilly]

yeah we ex-softies hold MS to a higher standard. They have an R&D budget of $5 Billion dollars dude. Putting out a "me too" response is okay, but not going to float my boat. I've installed Max on my PC, and it's okay, but it doesn't excite me. It doesn't make my life any better. Will lots of people use it if it is integrated into Vista? Sure. Does it deserve any hype? No, not really.

[Mick Stanic]

A higher standard??? I think the bagging of MS by ex-softies comes from the fact that a lot of you hold MS to a mythical higher standard that you think existed somewhere back in the 90's...move on... ;)

And your point with the R&D budget is what??? Its not a "me too" response...its a pre-beta app that works and works well...sure its not "feature packed" (oh sorry...like Google Talk is feature packed)...but again, its pre-beta.

Its designed to show what Avalon can do...and that it can also work on XP...all the new cool stuff won't be just for the Vista users. Sure it will work better and smoother and quicker under Vista...but peple won't be forced to upgrade straight up...and thats the cool bit.

[Phillip Molly Malone]

You could argue Google Talk has one big feature that a lot of the other IM/VOIP don't and in fact can't have and thats simplicity.

Molly

[Cameron Reilly]

"Its designed to show what Avalon can do"... what, make a photo album? Hmmm, there's a reason to upgrade.