With the launch of the 2019 Mac Pro, Apple has put professional-level Mac computers outside of the pay grade of a not-insignificant amount of post sound professionals who are now having to work on their own systems from home, and with Apple’s impending move to ARM-based CPUs, the future of Pro Tools in macOS as a whole is in question since we know how slow and/or resistant Avid would be to upend their entire code base for such a move. The stage is set for Avid to potentially put more of their weight behind Windows even though their road map for addressing the ARM move seems to be kept close to their proverbial vest, with the post-production sound industry eventually going wherever Avid goes.
With a large amount of the aforementioned audio post professionals working from home and seeing the value the PC and Windows side of things offers, the only thing holding post audio professionals back from considering the Windows OS as a comprehensively viable option in the long term is the lack of the Cargo Cult Spanner plugin, which has become an indispensable tool throughout the industry not only for complex surround panning and spreading, but for fold downs from immersive formats into 7.1, 5.1, and further down the chain.
I understand that some special tricks were utilized to make Spanner work that are considerably difficult to port the plugin to other operating systems. But with the expanding work-from-home market of post sound people, I can tell you that if you build it, they will absolutely come. Our industry is going to be in dire need of it soon and by putting the work into it now, you could stay ahead of the game.