Initial Setup Whenever I've finished installing Mavericks, the first thing I do is open Terminal and run: curl mavericksforever.com/postinstall.sh | sh This script will Update Mavericks to the latest version available. Change some default settings to resemble Snow Leopard. Remove apps and features which don't work anymore, and would just make me sad if I saw them. The result of this script represents how I want to be greeted by a fresh Mavericks system. Internet Web Browsing We need a modern web browser! Luckily, the incredible i3roly has us covered with Firefox Dynasty, a fully up-to-date version of Firefox modified to work on old versions of OS X. It works just like mainline Firefox, with every website that mainline Firefox does. I created a small Preference Pane which makes it easy to download new builds of Firefox Dynasty, and attempts to make Firefox better comform to Apple's Human Interface Guidelines. All real credit goes to i3roly. After installing the Preference Pane, I recommend completely deleting the ancient version of Safari included with Mavericks. Safari 9 is not safe to use in 2025! sudo rm -r /Applications/Safari.app Aqua Proxy Firefox Dynasty covers our web browsing needs, but we'll still run into trouble with other internet-enabled apps. Dictionary will say it can't connect to Wikipedia, and Mail will be unable to load many embedded images. These problems stem from Mavericks's outdated implementation of HTTPS/SSL/TLS. To fix them, use Aqua Proxy: Aqua Proxy is what's typically referred to as a local "Man-in-the-Middle Proxy Server". It sits between you and the internet, captures your computer's traffic, and modifies it to be compatible with modern servers before sending it on its way. Emojis The Unicode Consortium has introduced a lot of new emojis since Mavericks was released. We need to add them to Mavericks! Time Machine This will be short. Please do grab a USB hard drive and use it to set up Time Machine in System Preferences. Backups are good, and once Time Machine is set up, you can make a change to your system and then easily undo it later. For example... Delete Applications You Don't Use If you try to drag the Chess app to the trash, Finder will complain that "'Chess' can't be modified or deleted because it's required by OS X." Finder is wrong; Chess is not required, and you can delete it using the Terminal. I don't play Chess. I also don't use iTunes, don't own any DVDs, and don't read Apple iBooks on my computer. So, on a fresh install of Mavericks, I like to open the Terminal and run: sudo rm -rf "/Applications/Chess.app" sudo rm -rf "/Applications/DVD Player.app" sudo rm -rf "/Applications/iTunes.app" sudo rm -rf "/Applications/iBooks.app" Don't you love how hackable everything is? Removing stock apps from the Applications folder is completely safe—nothing will break—and this is your computer, so you should make it your own. You can always restore apps later using Time Machine. Just don't delete System Preferences, or anything in the Utilities folder.