Why does Auto Tone button in Quick Develop panel fail with Win 7 platform?

Question

I have been a user of Photoshop since the inception of Photoshop CS.  I recently purchased a subscription to Photoshop CC, which comes with Photoshop Lightroom 5.
I have never used Lightroom, so I purchased the Kindle version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5, CLASSROOM IN A BOOK.  I have this eBook installed on the same Windows 7 PC that I have Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5 installed on.
I ran into a problem in a section of the first chapter titled “Using Quick Develop in the Library module.”  This section, in part, instructs how to quickly improve the color tonal balance of an image.
After selecting the required image from the sample images for this lesson, I found the histogram in my Lightroom 5 Loupe view to be the same as the lesson’s photo illustration for this original image.  As described in the lesson, the photo did not have a balanced tonal distribution.
I followed the lesson’s instruction:  “4. In the Quick Develop panel, watch the tone distribution curve shift in the Histogram panel as you click the Auto Tone button.  Although the automatic adjustment hasn’t done a perfect job with this particular photo, there is substantial improvement; a lot of image detail has been recovered from the overexposed hair and face and there is more depth in the mid-tones. The contrast, however, remains unimpressive, and the darker areas still look flat.”  (See Adobe Creative Team [2013-08-06]. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5: Classroom in a Book [Kindle Locations 1024-1026]. Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.)
This is where I ran into a problem.  After clicking on the Auto Tone Button in the Quick Develop panel, my results were completely different than what was described and shown in the Histogram displayed in the lesson.  Instead, in my Lightroom 5, clicking the Lightroom Auto Tone button has increased the exposure, making it even more over exposed than the original image!  Therefore continuing to follow the instructions in the lesson was a waste of time, since my Auto Tone results were so totally out of sync from that of the lesson.
This disturbed me, so I decided to open the same sample image in Photoshop CC, Camera RAW 8.2.  Camera RAW provides an Auto Button which improves exposure and color tonal balance to an image.  The results were exactly the same as the Auto Tone functionality in the Quick Develop panel in Lightroom 5.  I couldn't understand why the lesson instructor's results were so positive and mine were so disastrous.  Then it hit me!  I discovered that the lesson writer of this Adobe Classroom in a Book was using Lightroom 5 on a MAC computer.  I could tell by looking at his lesson images.  Just to be sure, I tried this lesson scenario on a different PC with Win 7, Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5.  I got the same failed results.
I’ve heard from other professionals that Photoshop and Lightroom software only work properly on Apple computers.  I’ve always thought that this was a myth, but have infrequently experienced a good result using the Auto button feature in Photoshop Camera Raw on a Windows PC platform, so I don’t use it often.
What really has me frustrated is the fact that Adobe no longer has a direct way to report software defects to their tech support or process improvement  teams.  Their online bug reporting process is woefully inadequate.  I've tried twice to create a support ticket on the Adobe site, only to have my case withdrawn mysteriously.  I've tried their online chat, telephone support, and sent emails with image attachments to the address provided by their agent on the telephone.  My email goes unanswered and my open cases somehow get closed.
Any ideas on how to get this issue addressed by Adobe are sincerely appreciated.

Answer 1

Adobe tries to improve the Auto Tone function from time-to-time.  I used to completely underexpose an image that had a few bright spots such as car headlights turned on in an otherwise properly exposed image.  This is probably what you’re seeing, LR now guessing brighter more of the time, and it might change, again, in a future version so don’t be too concerned.  
As others have said, Auto Tone works on some images and not on others, and Adobe can only try to make it work better on more images by changing how it works on all images.  For the lesson example, the author purposely used an image that was improved with auto-tone that LR did at the time of authorship.   You will never have a picture exactly like the lesson’s example, either, so it’s not that important if the lesson is 100% accurate for future versions of LR, just that the general idea that some pictures are improved in certain ways by Auto Tone will still be applicable, and you’ll need to learn, by trial and error, what to do when Auto Tone doesn’t work well or the image needs further adjustment.  That is the important lesson, what to do with your own pictures.
You can reset a particular slider after a bad Auto Tone by double clicking on that slider.  The Exposure slider is the one I reset most often. 
You can also LR set the Auto Tone value for just one slider by holding down the Shift key and double clicking on that one slider.  I do this a lot for the Blacks slider to set the black point, without messing up everything else.