Apple built Safari because it was tired of relying on Microsoft's browser
For years Macs shipped with Internet Explorer as the default, under a 1997 deal with Microsoft. On 7 January 2003 Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's own answer, which he called a turbo browser, and demonstrated it beating rivals on speed. Safari is now the second most used browser in the world, behind only Chrome.
The Mac browser world was crowded before Safari. Netscape Navigator took over after its 1994 launch and came bundled with the system. Microsoft released a Mac edition of Internet Explorer in 1996, the same year Apple tried its own Cyberdog internet suite. Apple shelved Cyberdog in 1997 and agreed a five-year arrangement making Internet Explorer the default from Mac OS 8.1, while Netscape stayed preinstalled.
Apple wanted speed and control. Built on WebKit, Apple's internal fork of the open-source KHTML engine, the new browser went through codenames including Freedom, iBrowse and Alexander, the last a playful nod to the Konqueror browser that used KHTML. Jobs announced it at Macworld San Francisco with a beta the same day; version 1.0 arrived on 23 June 2003, and Panther that year made it the default. In April 2005 engineer Dave Hyatt got an experimental build through the demanding Acid2 rendering test, the first browser to pass. Apple opened up WebKit's source that June after complaints from KHTML developers about access to its changes.
The first iPhone in 2007 carried Safari, and for a spell it was the fastest browser on the Mac. A Windows version ran from 2007 to 2012 before being dropped for lack of users. Safari 5 in 2010 brought a reader mode, extensions and developer tools; Safari 11 in 2017 introduced Intelligent Tracking Prevention, using machine learning to block trackers; and Safari 13 added Apple Pay and support for hardware security keys.
Today it ships with macOS, iOS, iPadOS and visionOS, and its interface has been redesigned several times, most recently in Safari 26.
Source: Safari (web browser)
