Archive for May, 2008

Freshening Up: Giving old patchers a new face in Max 5

I have to confess that I always found UI design in Max 4 to be a little too cumbersome, and would almost always wait until a patch was completely written and debugged before bothering with any layout of UI elements and color. The design process was usually confounded in the end by the fact that it seemed no matter how hard you tried, it still looked like a Max patch (for better or worse). Or, you end up going to great lengths to build a UI and unlock your patch to find a complete mess of patching. I, like many other Max users, convinced myself that I liked the old Max 4 look and that I could deal with the limited color palette and pixelation. I could just build functional patches that did their job and didn’t need any polish. That was then. Now, along comes Max 5, with its more user friendly interface-building tools, and I’m starting to think it’s time to put a new face on all those old patches. This article is an exploration into my process of breathing new life into some dusty old creations.

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Email to Customers (April 24, 2008)

Product and Workshop News

Hello from Cycling ’74 headquarters. We have some big news.

Max 5 is now available for download. We’re very excited about this major upgrade and we hope you will be too. This upgrade represents a new era of Max programming, with a completely redesigned multi-processing kernel and a streamlined development environment built on a platform-independent foundation.

http://www.cycling74.com/products/max5

Important Max 5 Notes:

Other Helpful Notes:

  • If you previously created an account on our webstore, be sure to use it for quickest service.
  • Visit our Distributor page for the current list of resellers in your area. We are pleased to announce DACS Ltd. in the UK is now representing our products.
    http://www.cycling74.com/purchase/distributors

Finally, we are offering a new Max/MSP/Jitter Workshop for Beginners in London. For complete details, please visit our Workshop page.

http://www.cycling74.com/twiki/bin/view/Workshops

Thanks for your time.

Cycling ’74

Improving Your Patching Workflow

In addition to the smoother look and feel of Max 5, there have been a number of enhancements to the user interface that will help you to maximize your creative productivity and minimize the time spent performing repetitive and annoying tasks. In this article, I’ll talk about a couple of the features that have really improved my patching workflow.

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A Look Back at Maker Faire 2008

This year, we decided to set up shop at the 3rd annual Bay Area Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA. Last year, Cycling ’74 shared a little corner of a booth with the nice people at MakingThings, and that was enough to get us hooked on this crazy annual celebration of all things DIY and electrified.

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