Max offers many "GUI" objects such as sliders, dials, VU meters, piano keyboards, even "bpatchers." The only two in Pd are the number box and graphical arrays.
In Pd there's no "preset" object (because it's basically a bad idea) and you have to use explicit sends and receives to restore values to number boxes. Then just make a "message" box to re-send the values you want.
In Macintosh land, instead of getting tabosc4~ and arrays, you get cycle~ and buffer~. From Music 171 you saw buffer~ as a way to store audio samples. But you can also use buffer~ as a wavetable; the only gotcha is that you probably can't draw in them with the mouse. You probably have to use a sound editor to create them (and you should supply the soundfiles and have the patch load them.)