MAX/MSP and Jitter Coming to Mac OS X

Oct 05, 2002

Cycling '74 today announced that its interactive graphical media development products MAX/MSP and Jitter will be available for Mac OS X by the end of 2002. A pre-release version of the software is being demonstrated publicly at the 113th AES Convention in Los Angeles on October 5-8, 2002.

MAX/MSP takes advantage of Mac OS X's Core Audio and Core MIDI, which makes the use of multiple I/O audio interfaces straightforward and renders OMS and ASIO unnecessary.

"We are excited about having MAX/MSP and Jitter leverage the advanced technologies within Apple's super-modern operating system, Mac OS X," commented Cycling '74 CEO, David Zicarelli. "Mac OS X features Core Audio, Audio Units, Quartz, Java, QuickTime 6, symmetric multiprocessing, and hardware support that provides opportunities for further evolution of MAX/MSP and Jitter that was not possible in OS 9."

"Mac OS X's advanced audio and graphics technologies give creative professionals the ultimate platform for working with powerful, multimedia applications," said Ron Okamoto, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. "MAX/MSP and Jitter provide a dynamic audio and video development environment, and we're happy to have these tools available for Mac OS X."

Max, a graphical programming environment for music and media applications, allows its users to schedule events with millisecond accuracy, create complex mappings for incoming data, and run a large number of operations in parallel. In essence, it is a graphic tool to create programs by wiring together objects. MSP extends Max's capabilities by incorporating audio objects that are connected to create audio patches where signals flow from one object to the next-not unlike the fundamental concept of the modular synthesizer. Jitter is a set of video, matrix, and 3D graphics objects for Max.

Max/MSP and Jitter for Mac OS X will be free updates to users of Max/MSP 4.0 and Jitter 1.0 and higher. A public beta of the software will be available at the end of October.

For more information, visit their web site at www.cycling74.com.