Announcement - Max and new Apple Silicon computers
Dec 08 2020 | 9:43 pm
As everyone looks forward to Apple’s newest line of computers, we wanted to share that we are working on official Rosetta support, and anticipate having an update by early 2021 that officially supports running Max on Apple Silicon. The thing everyone wants to know, however, is “does Max work right now?”
We have had positive reports from both our internal testing and community feedback, but we have not been able to completely verify full support under Rosetta so far. We had gotten early reports of issues with our embedded web views that use Chrome Embedded Framework (including the authorization window), but these appear to have been addressed by Apple. We’ll be following that closely, and making every effort to provide support as soon as possible. All this to say that it looks optimistic but we hope that anyone jumping into it now has realistic expectations.
We are also developing a native version of Max 8 for Apple Silicon. This will be a more gradual process, and we’ll share more on our progress as we go. Like any big architectural change, this native Max version will not work with any third party externals and packages that haven’t been recompiled for the new Apple chips. We’ll be reaching out and working closely with Max developers to ensure this is a smooth process as soon as we know exactly what it will require. Based on what we know now, we’re hoping to have this version available by mid-2021.
As always, we welcome all reports of issues you encounter and will be working hard to address anything which comes up in your work as a result. We hope you'll all share your experiences. Thanks!
- Dec 09 2020 | 12:39 amAndrew... I find it so unfortunate that it takes more words to equivocate and critique than it does to praise because my personal regard for your work is in stark contrast to that balance. Please take this 1000 times:MAX IS AMAZING AND THIS COMPANY'S SUPPORT IS SECOND TO NONE.THANK YOU.Very excited and the delay is more than understandable. As a developer, please let me/us know at your earliest convenience what we need to usher max into the new era. Very sad about old externals. So many masters theses that were amazing that we'll be leaving behind but oh well!
- Dec 09 2020 | 8:10 amHey, and first, as said by Audiomatt, thanks and congrats to Cycling74. Now, question : does that mean that at some point in the near future updates won't be rolled on pre-Apple Silicon macs ? For example my current macbook dates from mid 2019, the last one had lasted nearly 9 years and during these years i have been able to keep up with all the latest Max updates ; honestly i wish this to remain true with that computer for say at least 8 years to come... not to mention the extensive use of 3rd party externals... so will non-Apple Silicon macs be given up at some point ? if yes, which estimated time frame ?
- Dec 09 2020 | 11:34 pm@Vichug there is really no way for us to predict if or when it would become necessary for us to stop supporting Intel-based Mac computers. It won't happen anytime soon. These decisions are never taken lightly, and are highly dependent on the tools provided by Apple, so I can only say that we'll keep doing our best as long as we possibly can.
- Dec 12 2020 | 10:00 amthe latest melodyne and logic officially support R2 as of today. R2ing seems troublefree and light on CPU.
- Dec 21 2020 | 2:20 pmMy Macbook Pro arrived earlier this morning with the new Apple M1 in it, 16GB memory upgrade, base 256GB hard drive. I have an AI synth creation built in MAX called Rudemath. You can hear/see it running here: http://www.rudemath.co.uk/ (goes to Twitch stream)To test the M1 I first ran my Rudemath application on the16inch Macbook Pro I developed it on. This machine has an 8 core 2.4GHz Intel cpu and 32GB RAM. It took just under a minute to open, then played fine with a little stuttering as the 3 neural nets (uses ml.star package) filled with notes, soon after the fans kicked in and drowned out the sound of Rudemath from the speakers, and the machine was getting hotter and hotter. Checked cpu usage and it was flicking between 50-75%, sometimes hitting the 90s.Copied the Rudemath app to the M1 Macbook Pro and ran it. Was informed Rosetta 2 needed to be installed so did that. Ran Rudemath app again. It opened near instantly and played just fine, no stuttering at all. Checked cpu usage and it was hitting a maximum of 50%, usually between 32-44%. Left it playing a few minutes like the 16inch Macbook but no fan came on (that I could hear) and it remained cool to touch.I thought my real world usage would at best show that the M1 was as good as the 16inch Macbook, just smaller, lighter, and able to be used on my lap without cooking me. But it just far outperformed the 16inch, and under Rosetta emulation too. Mind blown.Anyone want to buy a 16inch Macbook?
- Dec 24 2020 | 3:44 pmHi,Apple Silicon is going to be fire, especially once it arrives to Apple desktops... As far as I can see though, the multi-core benchmark scores still give a big advantage to Intel Macs (Core i7 and up, even with the same number of cores.) I'll stick to x86 ISA business as usual for a while.Anyway, interesting times for consumer technology...All the best, António
