The browser developed by Apple celebrated its 20th anniversary this week. Since its introduction on January 7, 2003, Safari rated as “The fastest web browser ever made for Mac” and over the years it has established itself as the perfect browser for devices with the bitten apple logo. And here we tell you how it has changed since then.

During Macworld Expo 2003 in San Francisco, Steve Jobs said that the original version of Safari loaded pages three times faster than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer on the Mac. Until then, as part of an agreement between Apple and Microsoft, Internet Explorer was the default. It was the browser. For Macs from 1998 The arrival of OS X Panther with Safari in October 2003.

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Safari celebrates its 20th anniversary

Steve Jobs during his Safari presentation in 2003

Before its official release, Public beta of Safari for OS X Jaguar launched in January 2003, with key features including the WebKit rendering engine for faster browsing speeds, Google search features built right into the toolbar, advanced bookmark management, optional pop-up ad blocking, a simpler file download process, and more. Later the browser expanded to other devices:

• The mobile version of Safari was released for iPhone in 2007.
• The mobile version of Safari was released for iPad in 2010.
• Apple says that Safari is still the world’s fastest desktop browser, on average 50% faster at loading frequently visited websites than Chrome on the Mac.

Safari on OS X Panther

Nevertheless Safari eclipsed by Google Chrome, introduced in 2008it currently ranks as the second most popular browser, especially in the United States, while in other countries this position is debated with other options.

With the release of iOS 16 in 2022, Apple rolled out a major Safari update that included intuitive options for sorting groups of tabs, Passwords, extension sync, web push notifications, and more.