VFXPro has an article on Max 4 describing a press event held by Discreet on Dec. 5th in San Francisco. Also of note, there's another, older article (linked to the first one) called "Product Architects: Discreet's Kinetix Line". It's from last year but still makes for some interesting reading: it's an interview with Jimmy Giliberti, Discreet's development director (since the article is from 1999, this might've changed), and gives a good explanation of the development cycle of each Max iteration.

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