I can't speak for all the points you have asked about but as a Mac user I would recommend:
2. Metadatics as Tag & Rename alternative
3. Chronosync software for backing up. My RB library is on a SandDisk external SSD portable hard drive and I use Chronosync to back this up to other drives, it does incremental backup and you can basically backup to any other source be that a laptop drive or other external drives.