Miller Puckette, the original creator of Max and an ongoing presence in developing its open source cousin, Pure Data (Pd), recently told the Pd mailing list he had compiled Pd for Intel Macs. You can download the Intel-native version on his Website:
(Curiously, he calls them “iMacs”, but unless he’s modified the UI to look nice on white computers, I think that means Intel Macs!) This is the first step on what should soon bring the full-fledged Pd platform to Intel Macs. In the meantime, I would honestly suggest booting into one of the excellent Intel Linux distributions on this machine, since Pd runs very well on Linux. But it’s good news, nonetheless.
I keep hearing wonderful things about Pd, even from Max/MSP users who use it as to complement Max on various projects. We’ve got a good thread going on the CDM forums about how to learn Pd, alongside a previous thread on open source sound tools, and I just looked through various Pd tutorials on a site called Streaming Suitcase. If you’ve ever got Pd patches you’d like to share, let us know.
