*Ahem*

The Billboard Top Ten for the week of 3.28.09:

Kelly Clarkson - All I Ever Wanted
The-Dream - Love Vs. Money
U2 - No Line On the Horizon
Nickelback
Beyonce
Jamie Foxx
etc.

No, the marketplace is most certainly *not* against over-production/homogenization. This music is actually popular; people genuinely like this shit.

What a stupid fucking thing to say. Pro Tools has nothing to do with why popular band's songs sound like overproduced shit. For that, you can turn to the producers, who in turn get their opinions from the marketplace. So far, people keep buying up the garbage that the major labels have been pushing, so guess what? It's going to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

If Pro Tools alone were the culprit, then ALL of the music being produced (Indie bands, Barbershop, whatever) would sound like overproduced shit. It doesn't. And since most of this music is recorded straight into Pro Tools these days, I guess we can eliminate Pro Tools alone as the sole reason popular music is shitty.

Instead, I think what you are getting at is that non-linear editing is making music homogenous, and taking the life (soul?) out of it. This could be a valid argument. It's too bad you didn't make it.

And yes, Pro Tools does run on Windows, including Vista. It is also pretty unreliable, at least when you are dealing with the TDM systems. The Macs run much more smoothly, and are much easier to troubleshoot when things (invariably) go wrong. Windows does have the advantage of being able to chase Unity though...

I'm not pulling this out of my ass; I have almost a decade of experience in the industry, and as I type this, I am mixing a commercial (in Pro Tools, on a 5 year-old Mac) for delivery on Tuesday.

I will agree with you on one thing though: Pro Tools is overpriced. If you want real sticker shock, try looking into Digidesign's hardware crossgrades. *Shudder*

Monopoly - a company or group having exclusive control over a commodity or service

In this case, Apple have neither control of a commodity (the actual PC hardware, virtually interchangeable with other PC parts) nor a service (running software).

Apple developed their software to work exclusively with their hardware, which is their right. They could develop software for toasters, and they would have the right to copyright that software as well. But you can't then turn around and say that their software should have to run on your toaster. That's the whole point of being in the business of innovation: having something that you can sell that no one else has. In this case, that's the ability to run OS X.

I'm not making the case one way or the other whether this is right or wrong, but that is well within their rights (under current laws) to operate as they have been. The parent's argument does not negate this.