stevebelovarich

My friend's trial version of Max 5.0.4 is freaking out. Toggle, number boxes, simple objects just won't appear on the screen. Instead greyed out boxes appear with diagonal grey lines. The name of the object appears in parentheses inside the box. This doesn't happen every time, about 70% of the patches she opens does this. She will spend minutes reopening a patch until it appears correctly. As a result, she thinks Max hates her. I attempt to counsel her otherwise.

Could this have anything to do with the Korean language set running on OS X? It seems Max is having difficulty drawing the objects. It knows they should be there and where, just no object.

My friend's trial version of Max 5.0.4 is freaking out. Toggle, number boxes, simple objects just won't appear on the screen. Instead greyed out boxes appear with diagonal grey lines. The name of the object appears in parentheses inside the box. This doesn't happen every time, about 70% of the patches she opens does this. She will spend minutes reopening a patch until it appears correctly. As a result, she thinks Max hates her. I attempt to counsel her otherwise. 

max-5-is-freaking-out

Given that Max will be incorporated in Live for stage performance in 

some cases, is anyone sure that there's enough stability in Max to 

I've seen a lot of messages on the various lists indicating bugs, or 

Ultimately, even if a "Visual Programmer" makes mistakes, especially 

in a visually assisted environment, it should be prevented by a system 

of "crash prevention" and in the case of recursive loops, should not 

Ultimately, it seems to me that all Max/MSP objects should pass some 

sort of Black Box test and be 100% reliable in the runtime environment 

of Ableton Live 7 or I presume 8 when it will be incorporated as it's 

been said Live 8 will be released in the near future.

I think Ableton and C'74 need to be real sure that there is high 

reliability, and with the integration, the products together should 

I have one very serious suggestion though -- Ableton should consider 

offering support for Flash ActionScript 3.0 so that Papervision3D can 

I'm copying Matt Chotin from Adobe on this because I've known him from 

the Macromedia days and was one of those pushing for an OpenGL 

Now with only Apple waiting in the wings to support FlashLite on the 

iPhone, I believe the true vision of Ableton Live with Max/MSP 

integrated, and I hope and pray ActionScript 3.0 SWF support included 

Those are my goals at least. I've been programming in Flash and 

ActionScript 2.0 and 3.0 since the inception of all technologies 

dating back to 1996 when it was FutureWave's product, then Macromedia, 

Adobe partnering with Ableton who has already supported C'74 is the 

Given that Max will be incorporated in Live for stage performance in  
some cases, is anyone sure that there's enough stability in Max to  
even use it in a "Live Stage" situation?

I've seen a lot of messages on the various lists indicating bugs, or  
serious or at least semi-serious issues.

Ultimately, even if a "Visual Programmer" makes mistakes, especially  
in a visually assisted environment, it should be prevented by a system  
of "crash prevention" and in the case of recursive loops, should not  
be allowed.

Ultimately, it seems to me that all Max/MSP objects should pass some  
sort of Black Box test and be 100% reliable in the runtime environment  
of Ableton Live 7 or I presume 8 when it will be incorporated as it's  
been said Live 8 will be released in the near future.

I think Ableton and C'74 need to be real sure that there is high  
reliability, and with the integration, the products together should  
soar to new heights.

I have one very serious suggestion though -- Ableton should consider  
offering support for Flash ActionScript 3.0 so that Papervision3D can  
be used.

I'm copying Matt Chotin from Adobe on this because I've known him from  
the Macromedia days and was one of those pushing for an OpenGL  
framework for Flash runtime.

Now with only Apple waiting in the wings to support FlashLite on the  
iPhone, I believe the true vision of Ableton Live with Max/MSP  
integrated, and I hope and pray ActionScript 3.0 SWF support included  
for music visualisation.

Those are my goals at least.  I've been programming in Flash and  
ActionScript 2.0 and 3.0 since the inception of all technologies  
dating back to 1996 when it was FutureWave's product, then Macromedia,  
now Adobe.

Adobe partnering with Ableton who has already supported C'74 is the  
ultimate situation.

On Feb 11, 2009, at 9:40 PM, Robert Thompson wrote:

In my experience, Flash is horribly unstable, at least in web use with 

Safari. More often than not, when Safari crashes, Flash is implicated 

In my experience, Flash is horribly unstable, at least in web use with  
Safari. More often than not, when Safari crashes, Flash is implicated  
in the crash report.

Chris Muir
cbm@well.com	
http://www.xfade.com

Have your friend with the Korean freaked out version of Max upgrade to the latest version and get back to us in support if there are still problems.

Quote: robert wrote on Thu, 12 February 2009 06:40

----------------------------------------------------

> Given that Max will be incorporated in Live for stage performance in 

> some cases, is anyone sure that there's enough stability in Max to 

> even use it in a "Live Stage" situation?

People use max in concerts for more than 20 years now.

I believe Max5 is mature enough to be used in "live" situations though I'm still working with max4 patches.

In my case it only crashes (less than max4) when patching/coding and I don't do much live patching.

I suspect and hope M4L will be more stable than pluggo.

> I've seen a lot of messages on the various lists indicating bugs, or 

> serious or at least semi-serious issues.

Most of the problems that appeared at the release of Max5 were related to the new GUI and programming facilities. The engine hasn't really changed.

> Ultimately, even if a "Visual Programmer" makes mistakes, especially 

> in a visually assisted environment, it should be prevented by a system 

> of "crash prevention" and in the case of recursive loops, should not 

> Ultimately, it seems to me that all Max/MSP objects should pass some 

> sort of Black Box test and be 100% reliable in the runtime environment 

> of Ableton Live 7 or I presume 8 when it will be incorporated as it's 

> been said Live 8 will be released in the near future.

It is part of your job to make your plugs reliable. I don't want to have a daemon running in background checking my patches and telling me I cannot do what I want. This is the first interest of Max, doing what others software can't do, if I want to screw my patch, I can ! And I don't think cycling will mount a team a la Digidesign to check and secure 3rd party externals (and I don't want it).

> I have one very serious suggestion though -- Ableton should consider 

> offering support for Flash ActionScript 3.0 so that Papervision3D can 

Concerning the flash support in Live, I'm not sure the number of people interested in it would be enough to spent the time and money to develop it, but I might be wrong.

With Max 4 Live it will be possible, Max will bring you a bridge to anything you want.

Concerning the bug in max with Korean Language, I have no idea, but why not switch to english for a while and test it, and report it to c74's support (configurations details, maybe screenshots...) ?

Quote: robert wrote on Thu, 12 February 2009 06:40
----------------------------------------------------
> Given that Max will be incorporated in Live for stage performance in  
> some cases, is anyone sure that there's enough stability in Max to  
> even use it in a "Live Stage" situation?

People use max in concerts for more than 20 years now.
I believe Max5 is mature enough to be used in "live" situations though I'm still working with max4 patches.
In my case it only crashes (less than max4) when patching/coding and I don't do much live patching.
I suspect and hope M4L will be more stable than pluggo.

> I've seen a lot of messages on the various lists indicating bugs, or  
> serious or at least semi-serious issues.

> Ultimately, even if a "Visual Programmer" makes mistakes, especially  
> in a visually assisted environment, it should be prevented by a system  
> of "crash prevention" and in the case of recursive loops, should not  
> be allowed.
>
> Ultimately, it seems to me that all Max/MSP objects should pass some  
> sort of Black Box test and be 100% reliable in the runtime environment  
> of Ableton Live 7 or I presume 8 when it will be incorporated as it's  
> been said Live 8 will be released in the near future.

> I have one very serious suggestion though -- Ableton should consider  
> offering support for Flash ActionScript 3.0 so that Papervision3D can  
> be used.

Concerning the flash support in Live, I'm not sure the number of people interested in it would be enough to spent the time and money to develop it, but I might be wrong.
With Max 4 Live it will be possible, Max will bring you a bridge to anything you want.

That was the case in the 1990's but not any longer.

I'm running Mac OS X 10.5.5 and I've never had Safari Crash and 90% of 

You need to research Papervision3D to see what dramatic things are 

If you prefer not to, that's cool, but I'm not saying it to convert 

you, I'm saying it to encourage you of the possibilities.

I'm running Mac OS X 10.5.5 and I've never had Safari Crash and 90% of  
what I do is in Flash.

You need to research Papervision3D to see what dramatic things are  
being done with it.

If you prefer not to, that's cool, but I'm not saying it to convert  
you, I'm saying it to encourage you of the possibilities.

That's cool - I'm not here to fight about it.

I just have plans to use the new MacBook Pro's with solid state drives 

for some performance and Ableton Live, and I want to make sure I'm 

investing my time wisely in learning Max/Msp/Jitter, all of which I've 

C'74 is a very innovative company but I've not yet had enough 

experience with it on my own (so much to do).

I was just commenting on some of the concerns popping up.

I just have plans to use the new MacBook Pro's with solid state drives  
for some performance and Ableton Live, and I want to make sure I'm  
investing my time wisely in learning Max/Msp/Jitter, all of which I've  
purchased and more from C'74.

C'74 is a very innovative company but I've not yet had enough  
experience with it on my own (so much to do).

On Feb 12, 2009, at 12:31 AM, Robert Thompson wrote:

> That was the case in the 1990's but not any longer.

> I'm running Mac OS X 10.5.5 and I've never had Safari Crash and 90% 

I'm sure that interesting things can be done with it, I just don't 

> That was the case in the 1990's but not any longer.
>
> I'm running Mac OS X 10.5.5 and I've never had Safari Crash and 90%  
> of what I do is in Flash.

I'm sure that interesting things can be done with it, I just don't  
think that it's a paragon of stability.

Apple is not likely to support flash, they say it here:

http://www.macrumors.com/2009/02/06/css-animation-coming-to-safari-already-in-iphone-less-dependence-on-flash/

Apple is not likely to support flash,  they say it here:

http://www.macrumors.com/2009/02/06/css-animation-coming-to-safari-already-in-iphone-less-dependence-on-flash/


Max 5 is Freaking Out