Upgrading advice PowerMac G5 to an M1 iMac

[Melonking]

Hi, Im planing to upgrade my mums main computer; she currently uses a G5 tower from around 2005, but it's not really able to go online reliably anymore and the DVI to ADB adapter keeps cutting out. I have a relatively clear idea of what my plan is but I figured I'd post here to check if anyone has any additional suggestions.

Back in the 00s she was very into digital photography and video, but not really any more.

• There is about 200GB of photos in Aperture, the Aperture libraries are also split and need to merged. My plan is to import them to Photos and hope it can merge.. however there are a lot of projects and folders setup in Aperture, Im a bit worried Photos is not going to be able to maintain the organization.
• Additionally there are a bunch of video projects in Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro, I don't think getting the new Final Cut is necessary, its not something she'd use, so as far as I can see those project files will just have to be dumped (Exports have been made already), however it would be nice if theres anyway to keep these projects accessible.
• Finally she does use an old version of PhotoShop, my plan is to get her over to Pixelmator since she not interested in subscription software.
• Most other programs like Word and iTunes should be no issue?

These days she mostly does some minor image editing for her work, maintains a website, emails, writing, watching movies etc.

With all that said, I think a M1 iMac maxed out with 1TB drive and 16GB RAM should be ideal; the previous computer lasted 15 years, so my hope is that this next one will go for at least 10; its also a nice neat package that she can setup herself if she wants to move it.

As for the actual transfer; a share over ethernet seems like the best way to copy files?

Additionally if anyone can suggest a good USB hub for the iMac that would be neat for connecting speakers via 3.5 jack, printer and an external DVD drive.

Many thanks for any advice!

 

[Boyd01]

Never used Aperture so I can't help there. But I was a heavy user of legacy Final Cut Pro who finally converted to Final Cut Pro X around 2016. That could be very problematic, there is no compatibility between the old and new programs, you cannot import old projects. There was an app that used to be available (no idea if it still is) that was supposed to help, but I did not find it useful because you lost almost all your editing on import. Basically, for any projects I wanted to continue working on, I had to import all the clips and start over again. And Final Cut Pro X is a completely different program that I had to learn from scratch. So this won't be easy for her.

I just bit the bullet and subscribed to the Photoshop Photography plan a few years ago when my old version of CS became too buggy on a newer version of MacOS, it is $10/month. I don't like subscriptions but also didn't want to start over with a different program.

iTunes was discontinued in Catalina so she won't be able to use that. I have a Mini running Mojave (last version that supports iTunes) and have about 2tb of media on it that I access with home sharing on two Apple TV's, a Mac, iPad and iPhone. iTunes was replaced with the Music and TV apps, which are similar but there still seem to be a variety of issues.

Of course, any legacy version of Word won't run on a new Mac. I subscribed to Office 365 when my old standalone version became unstable in Catalina. Do you or another family member already have a subscription? If so, the plan may allow you to add her at no charge. My plan allows 5 additional users and each gets 1tb of OneDrive storage, a surprisingly good deal from Microsoft.

This may very well be a difficult transition for her, so much has changed since then. I also had a G5 but switched to Intel somewhere around 2009. I am still using an Intel 2018 Mini since I'm very dependent on a Windows VM and also run old versions of MacOS in a Parallels VM.

 

[James_C]

I migrated my Aperture Library to Photos a few years ago when Aperture no longer worked in Mac OS Catalina.

I would merge the two libraries first in Aperture as the migration process converts the entire Library.

The Migration will preserve the folder structure in Photo's but you will lose some data as Photos does not directly support the Aperture rating system for example.

First copy the (Merged) Aperture Library in the Pictures folder on the new iMac.

To Migrate the Aperture Library press the option Key as you open the Photo's App, select other Library and navigate to Pictures folder and select the Aperture Library.

For your iTunes Library you can import that into the new Music App using the following method

In the Music app, go to File → Library → Import Playlist… then navigate to your old iTunes folder and select the iTunes Music Library.xml file. Music will take a while but it will import all your music and playlists, including smart playlists.

None of the third party Apps on your G5 will work on an  Silicon Mac (They need to be 64 Bit from Catalina onwards).

Your other migration points have been addressed by @Boyd01.

 

[Fishrrman]

From g5 to m-series is a "big jump".
A BIG one...!

I'm going to guess that NONE of the 3rd-party software apps she currently uses will be "portable" to the new Mac.
The apps may still exist, but new versions will be needed.

My approach to this would be to leave the old setup "as it is" for a while, get the new setup running close by, and start "moving things over" a little at a time.

Get one thing (such as photos) sorted out, then move on to the next (such as music).

I would not recommend ethernet as "a transfer medium".
Using a USB hard drive (or SSD) would be better (more connecting/unconnecting, of course).
You will have to take steps to prevent permissions problems between the old/new Macs (easy).

You already know that new Macs no longer have iTunes.
HOWEVER... a clever guy developed an app named "Retroactive" that will patch iTunes to run on m-series Macs with the latest OS. It's free, and it works great.

Retroactive will also patch up Aperture to run (although it's a little flaky after being patched). You probably won't want to set it up as her "regular" editing app, but it may be possible to get Aperture running "enough" on the new Mac to help get stuff transferred over to her NEW photo app (Photos or something else). I believe you need "the last version" of Aperture (3.6) for this to work. James C has a good alternative idea above.

Again, I'd stress the "little at a time" approach for this.
There will be problems, and it's far easier to deal with them one-by-one than all-at-once...!

 

[Rich B22]

Hi, Im planing to upgrade my mums main computer; she currently uses a G5 tower from around 2005, but it's not really able to go online reliably anymore and the DVI to ADB adapter keeps cutting out. I have a relatively clear idea of what my plan is but I figured I'd post here to check if anyone has any additional suggestions.

Back in the 00s she was very into digital photography and video, but not really any more.

• There is about 200GB of photos in Aperture, the Aperture libraries are also split and need to merged. My plan is to import them to Photos and hope it can merge.. however there are a lot of projects and folders setup in Aperture, Im a bit worried Photos is not going to be able to maintain the organization.
• Additionally there are a bunch of video projects in Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro, I don't think getting the new Final Cut is necessary, its not something she'd use, so as far as I can see those project files will just have to be dumped (Exports have been made already), however it would be nice if theres anyway to keep these projects accessible.
• Finally she does use an old version of PhotoShop, my plan is to get her over to Pixelmator since she not interested in subscription software.
• Most other programs like Word and iTunes should be no issue?

These days she mostly does some minor image editing for her work, maintains a website, emails, writing, watching movies etc.

With all that said, I think a M1 iMac maxed out with 1TB drive and 16GB RAM should be ideal; the previous computer lasted 15 years, so my hope is that this next one will go for at least 10; its also a nice neat package that she can setup herself if she wants to move it.

As for the actual transfer; a share over ethernet seems like the best way to copy files?

Additionally if anyone can suggest a good USB hub for the iMac that would be neat for connecting speakers via 3.5 jack, printer and an external DVD drive.

Many thanks for any advice!

I can't really answer much of what you're looking for, as I never used Aperture, don't like the Photos app and haven't done video for years. I can make a few suggestions for editing and managing her files though.

Have you looked at Affinity Photo? It is close to a perfect PS replacement, with similar tools (although a slight learning curve) however, there are tons of free and paid online tutorials, both from Affinity as well as other sources. This is available for a one-time payment of around $50 USD, however, it is often on sale for much less. One note; don't buy it from the App Store, as plug-ins will not work with that version. Buy it direct from https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/. I have no connection with Affinity, just appreciate excellent software at a reasonable price.

For organizing photos, I use a simple folder system delineated by year, with sub-folders labeled with subject. When editing photos, I give each picture a name, so I can easily search, if I forget what year it was taken.

Good luck with your project

 

[Melonking]

Thanks for the advice!

@Fishrrman wow I remember reading about Retroactive a few years ago but I assumed it would be totally irrelevant on an M1. That might be helpful with James's merging advice as there is not actually enough space on the old system to do a merge.

Also is there a reason you don't recommend ethernet? My thinking was that USB 2.0 only does around 60mb/s whereas ethernet is closer to 1GB/s plus it only requires 1 copy action.

@Rich Affinity is a great idea, I'll setup a trial with it and Pixelmator Pro and see if one suits her more; if not a Photoshop subscription might be needed.

 

[James_C]

@Melonking a hard wired connection is slightly safer in case your network connection fails, but to be honest given the slow transfer speed of USB 2 I would do it via ethernet. Unless you have a problem with ethernet your risk is pretty low.

If you can't merge the Aperture Library on the G5 then do you have a large enough external drive to use instead. Copy both Aperture Libraries to the external hard disk. Using the same method of using the ⌥ Alt key when you open Aperture you can then open the copied main library from the external drive. Then from the file menu Import > Library and point it to your second library.

You can then Migrate the merged aperture library to Photo's on your new iMac.

@fisherking has a great suggestion with Retroactive, but to be honest you are just putting off the problem. At some point you need to bite the bullet and migrate iTunes and Aperture as they are no longer supported. Trust me I waited as long as I could to keep Aperture going as I loved the App, but if @fisherking says it is flaky I would not want my photo collection in a compromised app...

Another vote for Affinity Photo - I moved over to Affinity when Photoshop went to a subscription model. It took a while to get used to the new UI, but I don't miss Photoshop at all now. Pixelmator I don't use but I would beware of it, its a good app, but there are moving to a subscription model as well.

 

[Boyd01]

@fisherking has a great suggestion with Retroactive

I think you mean @Fishrrman

 

[James_C]

I think you mean @Fishrrman

Yep, a bit to hasty on autocomplete my apologies @Fishrrman , thank you @Boyd01 for pointing out my error

 

[Fishrrman]

I always recommend using a USB external drive (even with USB2), because the data "is just there". You know where it is.

Also, I'm thinking that there might be a permissions problem with files moved over ethernet (although that might be avoided by moving them through the "shared" folder on both Macs).

Permissions are EASILY handled when moving files via a physical external drive:
- mount drive on desktop (on NEW Mac)
- click on drive icon, summon up "get info" (command-i)
- click lock at bottom of get info, enter NEW password for the NEW Mac
- put check into "ignore ownership on this volume"
- close get info

Now you can copy just about anything (some exceptions) from the drive to the new account on the new Mac, and whatever you copy falls under the ownership of the account into which you're copying it -- easy as it gets...

 

[Boyd01]

Also, I'm thinking that there might be a permissions problem with files moved over ethernet

I don't think so. Just turn on file sharing on the G5, add all folders that you want and be sure that "everyone" has read-only access. From the new Mac, this will appear as a network drive and you can copy whatever you like. The files should all be owned by you after copying, or at least I never had a problem. If you can provide an example of a permissions issue that I can reproduce, I'd be interested. I used to copy files between my Windows PC and Mac with file sharing without issue too before I started running Windows in a VM

For that matter, I can connect to an ftp or sftp server over the internet and copy any public files there. They will all be "owned" by me, regardless of the account that owns them on the server. So, I see no problem using gigabit ethernet and agree that will be much faster than using a disk on a USB 2.0 machine. I have never seen transfer speeds greater than about 35Mbytes/sec with USB 2.0 disks on a Mac (although they seemed to be faster on Windows IIRC).

Having said that, I think you also need a full backup of the old Mac on disk(s) - several copies would be even better.

 

[Melonking]

Ok to give an update on this project!

Everything is ordered, iMac will take about 2 weeks; also picked up a 6TB G-Drive and a 1TB Sabrent SSD for TimeMachine and extra storage, along with a SuperDrive and some USB bits.

New copy of MS Office 2021 perpetual license and Affinity Photo seems to be the winning candidate.

As for the Aperture adventure; here is the latest news:

I got Aperture running via Retroactive on my computer, cleared out a spare external HDD and copied over the old Aperture libraries, they needed to be upgraded to Aperture 3, that took a few hours but no issue.

As for the merge, in theory it's simple (according to this thread and James_C), you open one library then do File/Import/Library for each other library; however my copy of Aperture crashes after about 5 mins and never reaches the prompt asking to add or merge. That could be because of my external harddrive, or it could be Retroactive.

Since that was not working I decided to at least test upgrading one Aperture library to Apple Photos; this process took about 6 hours, so left it overnight. In the morning, success! Not only had it imported the whole library correctly, but it had even fixed some images that appeared broken in Aperture.
At this point though my external HDD gave up, it no longer appears in Finder (it shows as an uninitialized drive in DiskUtility) so I assume dead.

Having said that, I think you also need a full backup of the old Mac on disk(s) - several copies would be even better.

Don't jinx it! As far as I know the old files have no backups.

In a few days when the Sabrent SSD arrives I'll try again (and start backing things up), the SSD might fix the Aperture crash; if not Im not sure how to proceed with the merge. Worse case scenario the biggest Aperture library can be upgraded and then the other will have to be copied into it manually.