Safari, Apple’s browser, turns 20
This January 7, 2023 marks the 20th anniversary for Safari. Apple unveiled its Internet browser at the 2003 Macworld Expo in San Francisco, with Steve Jobs presenting.
Evolutions of the Safari icon
At the time, Apple claimed Safari loaded pages three times faster than Internet Explorer on the Mac. Internet Explorer was the default browser on Macs between 1998 and the release of OS X Panther (along with Safari) in October 2003. This followed a five-year agreement between Apple and Microsoft.
“Safari is the fastest browser on the Mac and we expect many to think it’s the best browser ever”said Steve Jobs, Apple boss, quoted in the Press release. “We are bringing innovation back to this category with the first completely new browser created in many years”.
The public beta of Safari was available with OS X Jaguar after the presentation in January 2003. Several features were present, including the WebKit rendering engine, Google search from the toolbar, improved bookmark management, optional pop-up ad blocking and more.
Safari is still relevant 20 years later. The browser arrived in 2007 on iPhone and in 2010 on iPad. Today it is the third most used browser in the computer world with a share of 8.98%. The first is Google Chrome with 66.16%, followed by Microsoft Edge with 10.99%. On mobile, Chrome is ahead with 64.2%. Safari is second with 23.59%.
