Max 9 is available today, bringing benefits for casual tinkerers and hardcore devs alike. There’s more code, more performance, more livecoding, more visual powers, and – one more thing: you get the building blocks Ableton uses for sound.

Move, the all-new compact all-in-one hardware platform from Ableton, got your attention – whether you loved it, hated it, or just weren’t sure. So here’s still more detail on Move: what it can do, what it can’t, how it compares, and some tips and hacks for getting more out of it even at v1.1.

You might have forgotten with the Move launch, but Ableton this week also shipped the release versions of Live 12.1 for Mac and Windows and Note 1.2 for iOS. So, to anyone complaining about Move’s cost, you can get Note on your iPhone for $8.99.

Ableton Move is compact, standalone, battery-powered hardware. It’s got all the synth, drum machine, and effects functionality of Ableton Note, but without the iPhone. And it means you get an easily portable Ableton Live instrument, with built-in MIDI sequencing and sampling. Price: 449 EUR / USD.

Ableton has quietly teased that “Ableton Move is coming soon,” with an image showing October 8. There’s a signup for email notification.

Ableton Live 12’s new Themes do look great, but is that enough choice for us obsessive DAW users, working on productions into the wee hours? Absolutely not! And so we’re grateful that Madeleine Bloom continues to do the great work of producing terrific themes, all available as free downloads.

Ableton Operator, the FM instrument designed by Robert Henke, is celebrating 20 years since its (internal) debut. Want to celebrate? How about a ton of FM synthesis and Operator history, 100 free presets from Robert Henke and Christian Kleine, and more links? And now is a great time to celebrate those years – or even try Operator sound design for the first time.

If you wished Ableton’s Note app worked as a controller, this could be for you. 7III Tap lets you play, use scales, control devices, trigger clips, and mix from your phone.

Ableton Live has never had a built-in notation view, but one intrepid developer has created one in Max – and it’s free/donation- and community-supported. And it works beautifully.

Live 12.1 just hit public beta, bringing more than you might expect: major Push additions, new ways of working more quickly with keyboards (and screen readers), a new Drum Sampler and pitch tracking and correction device, and more. Oh, and they finally fixed (my) single most annoying omission in Live. Here’s what’s new in Live (I’ll cover Push separately).