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Max is a graphical programming environment for music and media applications. It currently runs on the Mac OS; there is a Windows version in development (click here for more information). One of the main goals Max is to let you control anything with anything.
For instance, you can use MIDI to control a laserdisk player, or mouse movement to control
the playback of a Quicktime movie. Max excels as a way to customize the logic of building an
interface to interactive media. It lets you schedule events with millisecond accuracy, create complex mappings for incoming data, and run a large number of operations in parallel.
A little historical information: Max was originally developed at IRCAM, a music research institute in Paris, France, by Miller Puckette. Max is named for Max Mathews, a pioneer of computer music who worked with Miller Puckette in developing a scheduling algorithm similar to that used in the software. Max was further developed for commercial release by David Zicarelli and published by Opcode Systems until 1999. Cycling '74, founded by Zicarelli in 1997, has been developing and supporting Max and is now its exclusive publisher.
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