The reason I’m curious is that it’s such an infinitely extensible program, and such a great “Swiss Army Knife” for so many projects… including getting other applications and hardware to talk to each other without tons of difficult programming. Yet it still seems that its user base is smaller than many other apps, and that’s puzzling to me because it kicks so much butt. You can get really cool stuff up and running in no time, then tweak it pretty much forever. Hard to say that about most other apps when you consider the lengths you can go in this environment.

Hopefully it’s spreading fast and more people are being bitten by the Max bug… especially with the incredible rework for 5… it’s totally addictive and powerful!

–CJ

I too am curious about this. I’m getting ready to release a patch
online, and I’d like to know how many downloads is “successful” as
compared to the total MaxMSP user base. Eli, where do you get 9,000
from? Anyone of any authority able to speak on the matter?

-Jerzy Gangi

On 9/25/08, Seejay James wrote:
>
> Curious… if it’s secret info that’s fine, I’m just wondering if there are any official stats on how many copies have been sold of the earlier versions and of 5. Also am curious about the distribution of the sales worldwide, as it seems there’s a strong international community for it. Maybe stemming from its early progenitors at IRCAM?
>
> The reason I’m curious is that it’s such an infinitely extensible program, and such a great “Swiss Army Knife” for so many projects… including getting other applications and hardware to talk to each other without tons of difficult programming. Yet it still seems that its user base is smaller than many other apps, and that’s puzzling to me because it kicks so much butt. You can get really cool stuff up and running in no time, then tweak it pretty much forever. Hard to say that about most other appswhen you consider the lengths you can go in this environment.
>
> Hopefully it’s spreading fast and more people are being bitten by the Max bug… especially with the incredible rework for 5… it’s totally addictive and powerful!
>
> –CJ
>

This could be helped by having instructors in New Media programs incorporate it into their classes more. It’s not necessary at all to have “a Max class” to at least introduce some of what it can do: when showing the major apps like Photoshop, Logic, Final Cut, etc., a max-savvy teacher could help students understand some of what’s going on under the hood with simple patches that demonstrate things like signal processing, color saturation, MIDI generation and sequencing, etc. The right patches could help students explore this in a sort of abstracted sense…then they would understand more of the “hidden workings” of the familiar apps. I certainly would have benefited from something like this while learning them.

In fact, a “digital media experimentation kit” created with Max could be really valuable to students in these programs, or to anyone who fiddles with digital media (um, pretty much everyone). It would help people understand about the data as well as the logic, which is good because many software users take things for granted in applications, without thinking about how they work or how they might be made better.

9000…. seems pretty low?

–CJ

Very happy i am, and will continue to keep doing so…

wow… this is gonna be a long thread…

well, at least it seems like it’s spreading well. whenever I’m in class and fiddling with things, other students say “what the heck is that??” … and I just smile and say “it’s whatever you want it to be”. It really does get one thinking outside the box, since the box is totally up to you.

now if they would just hire me to teach it, all would be well in the world, and there’d be whole crops of new Max fanatics out there. ah well, someday…

+1

I think this is very, very difficult to say.

anyway, funny thread

pa

But I am asked this question a lot, and I wonder what it means.

Do we need a certain number to count as a success? To me it’s an incredible success that a bunch of people can be employed full time to work on this crazy product who are supported entirely by people who want to use it. Also cool is that there are people who make their living using Max. That just seemed inconceivable to me 20 years ago.

It’s also not clear how you count Max users. It’s not the same as counting people who own Labradoodles for example. Do we count someone who bought Max five years ago, went through the tutorials to number 23, but then put the software on a shelf?

I’m not saying it’s an invalid question. But since Cycling ’74 doesn’t really need to answer to anyone, we’ve never felt the need to answer it accurately.

Here’s another related question that I think is also fun: how many people claim to use Max but really don’t?

David Z.

i’ll give this one its first autoclaimed member.

How many people don’t claim not to use Max?

(sorry, I’m in that kind of mood this morning… :-))

brad

http://music.columbia.edu/~brad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq5csKvXCT4

And it’s true, there are over 9000 Max users, so I’m right. (:

Jon

David Zicarelli wrote:
> I’m just happy there are ten people who would be unafraid to tell the world they use Max.
>
> But I am asked this question a lot, and I wonder what it means.
>
> Do we need a certain number to count as a success? To me it’s an incredible success that a bunch of people can be employed full time to work on this crazy product who are supported entirely by people who want to use it. Also cool is that there are people who make their living using Max. That just seemed inconceivable to me 20 years ago.
>
> It’s also not clear how you count Max users. It’s not the same as counting people who own Labradoodles for example. Do we count someone who bought Max five years ago, went through the tutorials to number 23, but then put the software on a shelf?
>
> I’m not saying it’s an invalid question. But since Cycling ’74 doesn’t really need to answer to anyone, we’ve never felt the need to answer it accurately.
>
> Here’s another related question that I think is also fun: how many people claim to use Max but really don’t?
>
> David Z.
>
>
>

–
Jon Hallstrom
Dept. of Music, Colby College
5674 Mayflower Hill
Waterville, ME 04901
207-859-5674

I think, that if people are using Max/MSP/Jitter, plus with new users signing on every so often. Then I think that Cycling 74 have done there job, so to speak.
The user base might not be on the scale, say like Pro Tools, or Logic. But it is a user base none the less and it is extremely helpful, for which i am glad to be part of.
‘Geeks Of The World Unite’

And as for Davids question. I do use Max/MSP/Jitter. But am finding it hard to mess with it without a Laptop, because i only have an iMac, but hope to get a Macbook Pro very soon.
I have ideas when i am in taxis or around and about, so will be sorting it out to get into Max/MSP/Jitter more.

But so far, I am loving Max/MSP/Jitter. And cant wait till the SDK and Pluggo come out. It will be great.

No, definitely not. The obsession with quantity over quality has seeped into almost every part of life, so much so that the discussion of the latter as a self-sufficient entity (or, eh, quality, if you like) is ridiculed among certain people.

If it was just a matter of numbers and sales, Proust and his “Remembrance of Things Past” would constitute a footnote in the history of literature.

That can be answered up to a pretty little error percentage:

About 6.725 billion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

–
Stefan Tiedje————x——-
–_____———–|————–
–(_|_ —-|—–|—–()——-
– _|_)—-|—–()————–
———-()——–www.ccmix.com

If you’re maxing and you know it, clap your hands (clap clap)
If you’re maxing and you know it, clap your hands (clap clap)
If you’re maxing and you know it, then your face will surely show it
If you’re maxing and you know it, clap your hands. (clap clap)

If you’re maxing and you know it, stomp your feet (stomp stomp)
If you’re maxing and you know it, stomp your feet (stomp stomp)
If you’re maxing and you know it, then your face will surely show it
If you’re maxing and you know it, stomp your feet. (stomp stomp)

If you’re maxing and you know it, shout “Hurray!” (hoo-ray!)
If you’re maxing and you know it, shout “Hurray!” (hoo-ray!)
If you’re maxing and you know it, then your face will surely show it
If you’re maxing and you know it, shout “Hurray!” (hoo-ray!)

If you’re maxing and you know it, do all three (clap-clap, stomp-stomp, hoo-ray!)
If you’re maxing and you know it, do all three (clap-clap, stomp-stomp, hoo-ray!)
If you’re maxing and you know it, then your face will surely show it
If you’re maxing and you know it, do all three. (clap-clap, stomp-stomp, hoo-ray!)

and how many did actualy stay in 4.6 instead of going to 5….

;)

–Nathan

Thanks!

Jon