Microsoft Max Blog

Thank you for participating in the beta of Microsoft Codename Max. Over the past year, you’ve sent us tons of fantastic feedback that we’ve incorporated not only into Max, but into the platform layer with the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

Thanks to your participation, we were able to accomplish the goals of the Max project—to get customer feedback on new ways to approach software and services. If you’re interested in seeing where we go with these ideas, keep your eye on Windows Live.

We have turned off the Max services, so you will no longer be able to sign in to Max or share lists of photos with your friends. You can still read news and browse the lists you’ve already shared and received.

We look forward to delighting you in the future!

With this release, we’re excited to give you the ability to add RSS and ATOM feeds to Max for viewing in our attractive newspaper layouts.

We’ve also updated Max to support the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 RC1, meaning you can run the latest version with Max.  To make your Max experience even better, we’ve fixed quite a few issues and completed a ton of work under the hood! As an example, you can now add as many items to a list as your machine can store.

It’s important to note that by upgrading to the latest version of Max, you will lose any lists you might have created or received in previous versions of Max. We apologize for the inconvenience. You can still access the pictures from those lists in your My Pictures folder.

*Update*: Unfortunately, due to the timing of our release, the latest version of Max does not install on Windows Vista RC1.

Max now has News built-in! We've added a cool new experience to Max to help you stay on top of the latest news on technology, health, sports, and more, powered by MSN® Search Newsbot and Reuters.

We’re also rolling out several improvements based on your feedback on the blog and our forums. Please continue to send us your thoughts; we love to hear from you!

We’re happy to announce our new Annotate feature, which lets you draw on your photos without altering the originals. We’ve been having a great time adding notes and sketches, and now you can too!

We’ve made it a top priority to improve our setup experience, based on your feedback. We still have a ways to go, but this update should ease the pain.

Thanks again for using Max and sending us your suggestions and thoughts.

Thanks for installing Max. We’d like to share a few tips as you get started.

You can get help with Max on our forums and the help section of our blog.

If you want to share pictures with your friends (which is what Max is all about), your friends need to download and install the program too. When you share with your friends, we'll send them an email explaining how to get Max.

Please tell us what you think. We promise to update Max regularly based on the feedback we get from the community. We want to hear from you--that’s how we get better. Just add blog comments to send feedback, questions, or suggestions.

You can keep Max up to date by using Microsoft Update and turning on Automatic Updates. If you turn on Automatic Updates, Max will automatically keep itself up to date with security updates, brand new features, and more. Microsoft Update will also update other Microsoft Products like Windows and Office.

Click here to get started with Microsoft Update.