Wow, Max stopped supporting Pluggo, that's crazy. I can so totally see how that would make people uber-raged. I mean... I have several friends across the globe that went to school for 2+ years *JUST* to learn Max from A to Z.
But I have to admit that Max being sort-of integrated with Live is amazing. I've used it myself, and I really like it. I stopped using Max back in 1998-ish because I kind of got sick of it impeding on my creativity, because it takes a LONG time to do anything in it, which also forces you to build "bones" a lot to save time, which can also make the creation process get stale.
I switched to Buzz about that time, but even given the recent developments by Oskari, Buzz will probably always be behind the times now as far as quality an innovation are concerned. I guess we'll see, but I'm not waiting around for that to happen.
Live is the band-wagon to be on.
Defninitely sucks for Pluggo getting canceled. I wonder if Live/Max even has ANYTHING AT ALL to do with that though?
[edit]
Oh, and about Bootsy... you guys REALLY have to try out the TesslaPRO. I'm still flabbergasted by how amazing that thing sounds every time I patch it in and turn the knobs.
As a quick tip, a lot of the time I find I'm putting the "transients" knob at about 1:30 o-clock :-P then adjusting the drive so it's right under the point of taking away the clarity gained by moving the transients knob up from 12. If that makes any sense, I don't know.
However.... my huge beef with the plugins (as if i'm allowed to have one, since they are free) is that they take FOREVER to load and use up all of the CPU while they are loading. ESPECIALLY if there's audio going through the chain at the time.
[/edit]