Apps will not open, post OS X Mavericks update I recently upgraded my 2012 Retina MacBook Pro to OS X 10.9 Mavericks and shortly afterwards I updated the iWork apps to their latest version.

After they were all downloaded and installed, I noticed that in my /Applications folder there were, in addition to the newly updated iWork apps, the old iWork '09 apps in a separate folder. I had just assumed that this was just in case you still wanted access to the old iWork apps and so I deleted them.

For the first few hours, the new iWork apps were still working as expected. But, after deleting the old iWork '09 apps, I noticed that I could no longer open the Mac App Store. The icon in my dock just bounces once and then settles, unlike other apps which will bounce a couple of times and start.


I did some digging online but none of the results were recent enough for OS X Mavericks.
Many forum posts say to delete com.apple.appstore.plist as well as many other files but I can't seem to find any of these files anywhere on my hard drive.
I have contacted Apple but they want £35/$57 just to handle my support request.
The next morning, I noticed that the error that had caused the MAS to not open had extended to the iWork apps, as well as many other Apple apps including Calendar, Terminal and Photo Booth.


What I would like to know is how easily could this be fixed? To me, it feels like it would need to a complete fresh re-install of OS X.
I'm having the same issue on two of my machines. None of the core apps will launch (Mac App Store, Maps, Message, Photobooth, etc.).

One solution that worked for me for a short period of time:


If you hold Command+R on restart, it activates the recovery partition from which you can reinstall OS X Mavericks.
Unfortunately the "fix" doesn't last for long and you're either forced to rinse and repeat, or give up entirely.


There doesn't seem to be a genuine fix anywhere online that works for me.