Twenty years ago today, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs introduced Safari for the Mac at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, saying it was “the fastest web browser for the Mac.
Apple says that the first generation of Safari loads web pages on the Mac more than three times faster than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. Internet Explorer was the default browser for the Mac from 1998 until the release of OS X Panther with Safari in October 2003, as part of a five-year agreement between Apple and Microsoft.
In a January 2003 press release, Steve Jobs said: “Safari is the fastest browser on the Mac, and we predict that many people will find it the best browser ever. We’re bringing innovation back to this category with the first all-new browser we’ve created in years.”
In January 2003, a public beta version of Safari was released on OS X Jaguar with key features including the WebKit rendering engine for faster browsing, Google search functionality integrated directly into the toolbar, improved bookmark management, optional pop-up ad blocking, a simpler file download process, and more.
A mobile version of Safari was released on the iPhone in 2007 and on the iPad in 2010. The browser continues to use WebKit on all of Apple’s platforms.
