Moving from Rapidweaver to a PC Web Site Creation Tool, any help would be appreciated! MacPro 4,1 EOL, so time to move to PC.

So if you have been reading my posts you know that my MacPro is nearing the end of it’s life. The next version of OS X, macOS Sierra, officially does not support my MacPro 4,1. Now it does support the MacPro 5,1, and I can do a firmware flash and make my Mac think it is a 5,1, since the only different was a firmware upgrade and newer processors. So I will be able to Install Sierra, but the writing is on the wall and Sierra will likely be the last OS to support a 5,1 MacPro.

And it is not like I have a stock 4,1, it has an SSD, an NVIDIA GTX 670 with 4GB of RAM, and a ton of Hard drives, but the big issue is that Adobe Creative Cloud big updates tend to only work with the latest Mac Upgrade so my MacPro has maybe a year or at best 2 before it can no longer get OS upgrades, and will literally be a paperweight. Sure I can still run it for some things, but it won’t be getting security upgrades, and software will stop working on it.

Now for most software I can easily move it to a PC, or if not easily it can at least be done. I can resave all my Pages files to word docs, and things like that, but for Web Site Creation it is not so Easy.

I run Rapidweaver 6 for web site creation. I used to make my own web sites in HTM, and have run many many programs from Net Objects Fusion when it was Mac, to Dreamweaver, but I don’t want to code anymore, as basically when the web moved heavily to CSS I moved to WYSIWYG completely and gave up on coding for the most part.

So now I run RapidWeaver 6 (I know 7 is out, but do I really want to upgrade, when in the next few years I will be likely be moving to windows? Not really!) and do my 2 web sites, as well as my mom’s web site for her business.

Of course RapidWeaver is unfortunately Mac only. So the question becomes what to rebuild my web sites in that would work on a PC. The obvious choices are not so obvious.

I already run Adobe Creative Cloud, so Dreamweaver makes sense if I wanted to code HTML, but I don’t.

So I recently took a look at Adobe Muse, it’s WYSIWYG web creation tool, that was created not by the Dreamweaver team, but by the Indesign team. And MUSE looks fantastic and powerful, except for one major thing, BLOGS!

And it is blogs that hurt the whole equation! I have one local WordPress Blog, my Movie review blog, and 4 google blogger blogs. Now I know that not having a blog local means that it won’t show up in search for the site, though I get around this in RapidWeaver by user the Loghound SiteMap plug in, which scans all of your blog entries and gives them local entries in your siteindex.xml. And honestly if I had to I could move all those Blogger blogs to local WordPress blogs, to have all the entries show up as local pages, but even that doesn’t help with Adobe Muse.

With Adobe Muse, there are no blogs. Sure a few third party plug ins have been made to make local blogs, and you can show blog entries from RSS, but there is literally no way to show your whole blog. Not even a local WordPress blog! And it sounds like even if they do it will have to be blog posted on Adobe Business Catalyst and not on your own hosted web site.

If Adobe would let you use locally published WordPress Blogs I would be fine, and could move my Blogger blogs to their own WordPress blogs, and publish locally, but that doesn’t sound like it will happen.

And so the point of this point, to ask, does anyone have a solution for me. The best solution would be a cross platform WYSIWYG solution that lets me remake my sites on my mac before I move to PC, and lets me integrate my WordPress and Blogger blogs into the site easily. Now I could also go for a PC Only solution, and run it in either Bootcamp or Parallels ( I currently have both, so I can do that), but then I need a powerful WYSIWG web site editor that can incorporate outsite and local blogs, and is something like Rapidweaver.

Any input would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Trying to figure out what programs I will use if I move from Mac to PC

I have been talking about it for ages, and have used Apple Computers since I was 7 and got an Apple IIC. I love my Mac, but it getting old, and the next macOS Sierra has end of lifed my 4,1 MacPro. Luckily I can hack it to become a 5,1 with a simple firmware hack, so I can install Sierra, but it is likely the last Mac OS my computer will run. And big Adobe updates usually require the latest Mac OS. And the new “MacPro”, the trashcan is a joke that has not been upgraded since it’s release in 2013. It isn’t upgradeable, nor can it have more than one harddrive internally, so it isn’t pro. And it’s use of a Xeon processor is not a boon. Xeon’s are usually a few generations behind on technology, the big difference is that Xeon’s don’t have an integrated graphics processor (which doesn’t affect you if you us a high end graphics card) and they 2 processors! But the trashcan can only use one! And yes it can have 12 cores (for an insane price), but i7’s have now reached 8 or 10 cores and are newer tech, so why not use those if you are only using one processor. I really don’t get it!

And yes I could build a Hackintosh, but I have been using a Quo at work,mand while it is great, upgrades are never too fun, and you must disable security features to even install El Capitan.
So it is looking like my next computer is a PC, cause I can put an NVIDIA Geforce 1080, but I need to figure out moving away from many of my current programs.
I know I can move iTunes to PC, though I hear it doesn’t work as well on the PC, but my library and ratings will make it over.
I can export and move my mailboxes, browsers and the like pretty easily. There is nothing to easily move my Photos library to Windows, but I can import my Library into Adobe Lightroom and it will take my Keywords, then move to PC so it will work there. Pages and the whole iWorks suite is a pain as I need to open each file and save it out to word (hopefully I can automate it).
Making my web sites is more of a pain. I have used many programs over time, starting with Net Objects Fusion before it went Windows only, and I have even used Dreamweaver, though my HTML skills have gone to hell, and I don’t want to code anymore. So currently I use Rapidweaver, which makes it easy and I have 2 different web sites for me and my mom’s web site, which can link to much web site content. Now I am starting to look at Adobe Muse as an alternative, but I am not sure it will easily plug into all the content I currently use, from YouTube, Vimeo, 500px, or Flickr, so sites you can easily upload things and have them automatically show up on your web site. And it looks like there is no way to embed my blogger blog into muse, as I have done with Rapidweaver. Might be able to do my self hosted wordpress, but not my blogger blogs. Damn!
Then I will of course have to figure out a bunch of other programs, and especially system tweaking, and a new backup system, as I can’t use time machine anymore.
It is surprising to me how little info there is online for moving from Mac to PC. Any info or even programs to help seem to be made to go the other way.
Oh well, when it happens I will likely be running both machines for a while, until I am sure everything is moved over.
And I am sure I will miss my Mac in many ways as I have Windows 10 in parallels and bootcamp on my mac, but it works, and honestly is a more pro system nowdays.

OneRiver Media on NVIDIA GTX 1080 being death nell of high end Mac Graphics

NVIDIA recently announced the GTX 1080, which is half the price ($699) of it’s Titan, twice as fast and draws less power.

Marco Solorio of OneRiver Media talks about the NVIDIA GTX 1080 being the end of the MacPro as a high end graphics and editing system, since there is no longer a PCI based Mac! I do agree. The old PCI based MacPro will only last so much more, and it is already so far behind on modern technology.

So while I would prefer to run a Mac and OS X, I don’t want the ridiculous Trashcan MacPro, and I want 2 GTX 1080’s for a video card (or theoir version of a Titan), and hell I want the Microosft Surface Book as a laptop. Apple is pushing me away from the computer I love!

PCWorld on the aging MacPro, which is too positive

PCWorld has an article on the aging 2013 MacPro update, which hasn’t seen a single update since it’s release. Honestly though the article is too psitive on what Apple can do if they a new update with new technology.

The Problem is they made an unupgradeable pro Macintosh, and to make a better machine, you have to but a new one. Many people including me, have an old style MacPro that we have continued to upgrade to make it relevant. And the New MacPro can’t do that. You have on hard drive and two custom video cards and that is it. No upgrade other than RAM and external devices. And they have huge issues with external thunderbolt, like drives being disconected for no reason (See this article on MacPerformanceGuide).
Sure a non upgradeable machine means more money for Apple, but not upgrading the machine in 3 years, and making it much less than most desktop pc’s, means PC’s are much more powerful for less money with much better technology! It means pro users are going to consider leaving Mac altogether!
Seriously, does Apple want to lose Pro users? I have been an Apple user since the Apple IIC, but the non-upgradeable MacPro makes me consider moving to PC! At least if they consistently upgrading the unupgradable MacPro with the latest tech, it would make me consider the MacPro, but a 3 year or longer upgrade cycle is not acceptable! I mean Thunderbolt 3 is out on PC, and the latest NVIDIA graphics cards blow anything out of the water made in 2013, not even considering only having AMD video cards as an option, why are these not available on a Mac! Shit I would be OK with a non Xeon i7 Mac Pro with upgradeability, as it would blow my my MacPro 4,1 out of the water!
Apple is obviously not caring about Pro users, and not minding if they leave, which is scary since they are the people that kept Apple alive when it was the worst in the market. Honestly just admit it and give up on Pro users or actually make upgraded pro machines!

Message now works on my Mac and all it took was resetting my PRAM! Some NVIDIA weirdness though.

I can’t believe I had not tried that, but Apple support got me and now Messages works in El Capitan

There was some strangeness though, and it is to do with my NVIDIA Geforce GTX 670 I mentioned in my previous post. After resetting the PRAM the computer came back up, but all the blue was orange again, and this time I took screenshots, but they looks correct once the problem is fixed! And to fix the issue I had to re-install the latest NVIDIA web drivers, though they were showing as already installed. Next time I will take a physical picture.

10.11.2 El Capitan update did not require NVIDIA web driver to boot (though it looks crazy)

I run a NVIDIA GTX 670 with 4 GB of RAM in my MacPro, and it is not flashed. So when I update the system I have to use VNC to sign into my Mac and update the NVIDIA Web drivers and restart before my Mac shows anything on the monitors (or I have to swap my old GTX 270 and do the Update).

This seems to have changed with 10.11.2. In fact it showed the updating screen before the Desktop, and then came to the desktop. Of course it was not normal, in fact all Blue Colors were Orange! I wish I had though to take screen shots, as after the update I upgraded the NVIDIA web driver and restarted and everything was back to normal.

This is awesome news if this continues in the future, as it makes it much easier to upgrade to the latest NVIDIA web driver. I hope it just wasn’t a fluke.

Still unable to log into Messages with iCloud in El Capitan 10.11.2

So 10.11.2 came out, and I am still unable to log into Messages with iCloud on my Mac, though it works fine on my iPhone and iPad.

So I am on the phone with Apple Tech support. They for sure can see that my MacPro is not authorized. We went through signing out my iPad and iPhone of Messages, Facetime and iCloud and then signing back in, but that didn’t help.

I was then moved to a level 2 tech, who sent me and apple application called Capture Data, and had me try to log into Messages with it collecting packets, and I sent the info to Apple and they will be contacting engineers.

They were very nice and I am supposed to hear back Monday. Fingers crossed that they can figure this out. Seems like it has to be on their end, as it worked fine before El Capitan and the weirdest part to them as well is that it still happens on my clean install of the OS.

Mac Peformance Guide on a new Mac Pro

Mac Performance guide fields a question on why their isn’t a new MacPro tower.

And hopefully they have it right, that Apple is not dropping it, but waiting for Thunderbolt 3, which can go over a USB 3.1 cable, and leave it all one port.

Still doesn’t answer the need for real PCI slots and the ability to use normal video cards (especially NVIDIA cards), but it would make for a much simpler machine. If a port can be USB, Video or Thunderbolt with the same connector.

OneRIver Media Blog on upgrading a 2009 MacPro to it’s fullest potential

One River Media Blog has an awesome article on fully upgrading a 2009, 4,1 MacPro to it’s fullest potential to make it rival the new trashcan MacPro.

This involves replacing the processors with Dual 6 CPU’s which you can now get for around $650 (or less for a slightly slower model) installing dual SSD’s for a startup drive, an NVIDIA Titan X with 12 GB of Video RAM, 64 GB of 1333MHz RAM, 2 6TB internals and a 4TB internal. This is all doable for around $4000, much cheaper than a new Trashcan Macpro with the added bonus of an NVIDIA graphics card VS the unupgradeable ATI graphics cards in the new MacPro.

Honestly if I had the money this is what I would love to do with my Mac! It would give me years more life with my Mac and really make it fast!

The CalDigit FASTA-6Gu3 USB 3 and ESATA PCI card for Mac does not and will not work with Yosemite

So I have a CalDigit FASTA-6GU3 USB and ESATA PCI Card for my MacPro to add USB 3 to my old MacPro 4,1. And it worked great for a long time, but not since Yosemite came out.

I checked there web site about it, and it says this:

It does not support OS 10.10, so I wrote to CalDigit, and got this response:

Dear Jonah,

We regret to inform you that the mac OSX platform is no longer supporting the chipset used on the FASTA-6GU3 card after 10.9. Therefore, it has become impossible for us to develop a viable driver for the 10.10 platform that will work with the card. Unless you’re able to revert to a previous version of OSX, you will be unable to regain functionality out of the card’s USB 3.0 ports. We apologize for the inconvenience this causes.

Regards,

CalDigit Support
CalDigit, Inc.

It seems you must now buy the Pro version to have OS X 10.10 support.

Total bullshit! I am staying away from this company!