I Got a Working Modern Web Browser on OS X Mavericks!
This OS is almost ready to be a daily driver again!
UPDATE: Substack user Camerique left a comment indicating that in December 2024, “Firefox 78.15 won't support sites like Reddit, Yahoo, and Facebook…”. I have not verified this, but it sounds like browsing the modern web on Mavericks may be at an end.
A couple weeks back I posted an article called called Let’s See What We Can Do with an Old Mac, and in it we looked at a couple of older versions of OS X — namely 10.9 Mavericks, and 10.8 Mountain Lion. While Mountain Lion was fun, it had some weird internet issues when trying to connect to my phone’s hotspot and I couldn’t really use it for much. Mavericks on the other hand offered a much more modern feeling experience despite being only a year older.
The biggest hangups I had with using Mavericks in 2022 was the web experience. Safari lost support years ago and can’t do much with modern web standards, so I literally have to create a new certificate for almost every website I visit in SeaMonkey and even then about 50-60% of the sites didn’t work right. My next best option was to try a pseudo-modern browser like Pale Moon. These browsers are forks of older versions of, say, Mozilla Firefox, Chrome and the like and Pale Moon wasn’t bad! Unfortunately it wasn’t perfect and certain more modern features (namely in HTML5) struggled or just wouldn’t work at all. Well then this morning, wanting to post to The Retro Millennial and having forgotten my newer laptop at the office, I had an idea
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In a few articles I’d heard people talking about a version of Firefox ESR (extended support release) that was being maintained for Mavericks not long ago but when I went to try and download it I struggled to find anything other than the two newest versions (ESR 91.x and 102.x). Well thankfully the internet never forgets and I was able to track down a download for Firefox ESR 78.15 over at MacUpdate
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I gave it a go and sure enough it works! Last updated in October of 2021 it’s able to handle all the bloat of the modern web and all the HTML5 and JavaScripty nonsense it takes to be functional online these days, including actually being able to sign into Substack!
Here it is 2024, and Firefox 78.15 won't support sites like Reddit, Yahoo, and Facebook gives a warning message.
My 2013 iMac was running Catalina until I tried to fix a minor problem and created a worse one, so currently I'm only able to run Mavericks. Thanks to this post, I'm enjoying my return to the past—the iMac feels faster online, and the only loss so far seems to be streaming services, which I don't need on the iMac. Youtube works, so it's not like I'll be deprived of video if I stay with Mavericks and Firefox ESR 78.15. Thank you!