Call me crazy, but with an older Macbook, CPU optimization is crucial.
For me, that’s a really big deal because I never use any third plug-ins when I perform live. Probably my favorite thing about Max4Live patches is that they run natively in Live. I’ve sorted through the archives and picked out five basic, but totally awesome M4L patches that I simply can’t live without. Suffice to say it has a notably steep learning curve, but never fear – there is an awesome community of programmers on the internet who build M4L patches and give them away for free.
One of the things that really sets Ableton Live 8 in a league of its own is the ability to create your own effects, instruments, and MIDI functionality using the extremely versatile object based programming environment, MAX/MSP.