If I have my mac not restart apps when it restarts, why does it launch all previously launched apps if it crashes?

I pretty much said it all in the title, but if I have my mac set to not restart apps when it restarts, why when it crashes does it restart all the previously open apps? In all likelyhood it is one of the apps that crashed, so why not honor the setting that I have been using and not open apps if it crashed?

Apple Giveth and Apple Taketh Away. Taking away ringtone support from iTunes 12.7.

So Apple has released iTunes 12.7 and after years of people complaining have removed some parts of itunes to relieve all it’s complaints of bloatware.

They have removed the iOS App store and the Ringtone manager completely from iTunes.

Unfortunately there is no way to now organize or control your ringtones from within iTunes. You can manually drag ringtones to your phone with iTunes, but they have removed the sync feature. This is a feature I used all the time, and this is just frustrating. I make my own ringtones, as I don’t want to pay Apple for them, but they obviously just want me to buy ringtones from them.

Of course I still want custom Ringtones. Luckily the latest version of Rogue Amoeba’s Fission has updated Ringtone support, that saves the files locally (since it can no longer install them) and you can manually install them using iTunes.

Of course there is the problem of getting the old Ringtones out, but luckily I have Ecamm’s PhoneView, which I could pull the ringtones back out to my Mac (as well as backup texts and messages and many other thing).

I hate how Apple has a propensity to remove features that they no longer care about, but many people use all the time and have been using for years!

And I am not looking forward to when I get my next phone and have to re-install all apps via download instead of directly from my Mac!

MacPro Crashes are certainly to do with my NVIDIA Video Card

So I have been having some serious crash problems of late on my MacPro 4,1 that has been firmware flashed to a 5,1 with an NVIDIA GTX 670 and 4GB of RAM. I have posted about it here and here.

I am running 10.12.2 with 32 GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 4095 MB and I had started getting bad crashes with noise in the image, which I show in a previous post. And it was happening more and more, especially when trying to run Premiere Pro. I had been running the OS X driver instead of the web driver, as it seemed to be more stable, but when I switched to the web driver 367.15.10.25f01 those crashes stopped, though I did get random restarts still, and crashes when I try and run Premiere Pro (which my previous posts show was from the Web Driver).

So the fact that the different drivers have the different crashes to me seems to show that it is for sure the video card that is causing the crashes. Unfortunately I don’t really have the money right now for a replacement. Eventually I want to replace this whole rig with a PC (as the 2013 Trashcan MacPro is not a powerful enough machine for what I need) but that would be even more.

Now I currently have Premiere Pro running, but am doubtful it won’t crash again soon. And I have run TechTool Pro 12 and it showed my Graphics RAM as being fine. Are there any other tests to see if my video card is for sure failing? I posted at Apple forums, but have gotten no help.

EDIT: Well I was wrong about none of the video noise crashes with the Web Driver. I hadn’t had any, but when running Premiere they happen with consistence. I have had 4 of them in less than an hour. Seems like as soon as CUDA cuts in the issue is happened with the web driver. Basically I can’t use Adobe (the main use for my machine) or I get the crashes. SHIT!

EDIT 2: Also posted on MacRumors and at least one poster says bad video card.

Simon Wyndham on RedShark News on him considering leaving the Mac for Windows Editing

Simon Wyndham at RedShark News has a good read on why he is considering moving back to PC after the lackluster Pro Laptops and the lack of a real Pro Mac.

Now I have been saying this for years now. I don’t want to leave Mac, as I like it much better than Windows, but Windows has really become superior for Professional Computer work. There is not the choice with Mac, and the fact that the MacPro is from 2013 and itself has no upgrade ability really limits the Mac. Sure I could go Hackintosh, but working on a Quo at work I have seen the issues with upgrading, and don’t really want to deal with it.

Apple has given up on the creative professional, and Microsoft has stepped up. Look at the next Windows Update for Creatives, and the Suface, Surface Book, and Surface Studio are really for creatives!

I think Apple is making a huge mistake by not making machines for the market that kept them afloat through all the bad years, but Tim Cook doesn’t seem to agree, and Apple will suffer for it.

No one is talking about the fact that Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017 runs on Yosemite, El Capitan and Sierra on Mac

So Adobe released it’s latest update to it Creative Cloud Suite yesterday, and no one is talking about one of the biggest things for Mac OS X users! The last version 2015, only ran on El Capitan, which was an issue for many (especially Hackintosh Users), not running on any earlier OS. Well with 2017 it seems things have changed!

Just check out the Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017 System Requirements on Adobe’s site, and you will see what I mean!

Mac OS X  v10.10, v10.11 or v10.12

Yes, that means it now runs on Yosemite, El Capitan and Sierra! Who releases a new version that works on earlier software? A company that listens! Wow! Awesome!

And I can finally upgrade to Sierra on my home machine!

Batch Converting Pages Documents to Word Documents with Applescript

So if you read this blog you already know that I have pretty much come to the decision that my next computer will not be a Mac. I love my old MacPro 4,1 but it is getting long in the tooth, and I haven’t even been able to do the Firmware Upgrade to get it to 5,1, so the next OS Sierra will not work on my current MacPro as it will only work on a 5,1 (I haven’t tried putting in my old video card before the upgrade, which might help, but it looks like El Capitan makes it harder).

Unfortunately in 2007 I moved over to Pages to do my invoices, resumes and cover letter. Now you can individually export your documents to the modern word format docx, but I am talking hundreds and hundreds of files that I may want to access at some point, so I wanted a way to batch those files.

This requires applescript, and while I used to be OK at Applescript all those skills have since gone away.

A quick google search showed one page dedicated to scripting the iWorks suite, and it is iWorkAutomation. Specifically there is a script to Export to Word, but it is not a batch export, just a single use, and so not of use to me, except for stealing some of it’s commands.

So then I went back to the old faithful applescript forums MacSpripter, and did a search. And I found an awesome script from Yvan Keonig, which automates the process, allowing you to pick a folder with you pages documents and then chose a destination folder, and it batch converts to PDF files.

Luckily my limited Applescript skills and the fact that the script was so well written, let me use the Microsoft Word commands from iWork Automation and combine them to make a script to convert to Word documents.

Just copy this script and paste it into Script Editor and run the script. You can also save the script to your scripts folder.

set theSourceFolder to (choose folder with prompt “Select a folder whose files you wish to convert to word:”)
tell application “Finder”
set filesArray to every file of theSourceFolder whose name extension is “pages”
end tell
set theDestinationFolder to (choose folder with prompt “Select a folder where you want the converted files to be placed: “)
tell application “Pages” to activate
repeat with aFile in filesArray
tell application “Finder”
set fileAlias to aFile as alias
set fileName to name of fileAlias
set fileExtension to name extension of fileAlias
end tell
set theOriginalName to fileName
— remove extension
set prevTIDs to AppleScript’s text item delimiters
set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to “.” & fileExtension as string
set fileName to first text item of fileName
set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to prevTIDs
— prepare desktop folder path and name
set docPathAndName to (theDestinationFolder as text) & fileName & “.docx” # EDITED
tell application “Pages”
— open the file
set targetDocument to open fileAlias — EDITED : was aFile which is a Finder reference, not what Pages requires
repeat 10 times # I added a loop which may be useful if the original document is very long
try
export targetDocument to file docPathAndName as Microsoft Word
exit repeat
on error
tell me to delay 0.5
end try
end repeat
— close it
close targetDocument saving no
end tell
end repeat
tell application “Pages” to quit
display dialog “Done!”

Awesome, now I have batch updated all my pages documents to Word documents. Sure the formatting needs some updating, but at least they will all work on a PC!

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!

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.

Update on iTunes and El Captian

So I have still not got iMessages to work in El Capitan and I have to Log into iCloud every time I restart or it doesn’t work, but this is about iTunes.

After getting my iTunes back working, but losing all of my playlists and Metadata, I have been working on re-rating my tracks, and remaking my playlists.

What is interesting, and scary to me is as I rate more tracks, iTunes slows down more and more, and I am getting more and more beachballs. Basically I listen to a track and give it rating then skip to the next track, and often it starts playing the new track, but doesn’t show it in the interface for a while and I get the beachball for a bit before I can rate the next track. And as I rate more tracks and remake more playlists it gets worse.

I just hope once I am done (as I am only in B so far) that it doesn’t slow down to the speed of my old messed up Library. I thought the new clean library would just stay faster, but it seems to be getting slower the more work I do on it!

This is really scary as it shows that the slowdowns are indemic in iTunes code with large libraries and a large metadata collection.

It means Apple really needs to start over on iTunes and rewrite the code from the base up, but that is a scary prospect as it will likely break much of the functionality that exists (and they have already been losing more and more functionality over time), and create new issues for a while.

Honestly I just hate to have to put all the time into fixing my iTunes only to see it be slow and hard to use again.

Problems with Mail in El Capitan eating all application memory

I have been getting problems in El Capitan running out of application memory (and I have 24 GB of RAM and am not running many programs). I checked Activity Monitor and it seems that Apple Mail is the culprit and is eating all of my memory and run time.

I did a google search and came up with this Apple Discussion on the issue. It seems that Mail is loading all of it’s log files into RAM and compressing them into ZIP files. You can at least temporarily fix the problem by deleting your log files at ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Logs/Mail/ with Mail closed.

And the problems continue with El Capitan!