The Safari browser turns 20 years old today, and I remember excitedly firing it up for the first time.
When Steve Jobs introduced Safari at Macworld 2003, he described the brand-new browser as a speed demon and way easier to use than competitors.
“Buckle up,” he said with a smile. “We have done our own browser and it’s hot … it’s sweet.”
A few weeks later, I deleted it in disgust. Safari wasn’t sweet. It sucked!
Safari web browser turns 20
Safari did have a nice clean interface. It had a simple bookmarks bar and a prominent search box with Google built in.
But for several years, Safari was nigh-unusable.
It promised great things — primarily speed and not being Internet Explorer, the default browser on Macs at the time (thanks to a deal Jobs struck with Microsoft’s Bill Gates).
Everyone hated Internet Explorer, which was bloated, ugly and slow. When unveiling Safari, Jobs promised it would be the fastest browser on the Mac platform. (Watch Jobs introduce Safari during the Macworld keynote.)
Fast but buggy
And Apple’s new web browser was pretty snappy. But unfortunately, Safari was buggy as all heck. It crashed all the time. Worse, early versions of Safari didn’t have the ability to remember open tabs — a basic requirement these days. So when it crashed, it took all your tabs with it.
I hated Safari so much at the time, I wrote a screed about it for Wired.com: “Who in Their Right Mind Would Run Safari on Windows?”
Safari was 4 years old then, and Apple had just released a version for Windows. I detested it so much, I wondered why any sane Windows user would download it.
I was using Firefox at the time, a free alternative to both Safari and Internet Explorer that was far superior. It was fast, stable and supported plugins, of which there were plenty.
Luckily, Safari improved over time
Screenshot: Nathan/toastytech.com
In the ensuing years, Safari has improved by leaps and bounds, both on Mac and iOS.
It’s now my default browser on both platforms, and it has happily kept pace with competing browsers. It’s now the third-most-popular browser in the world, with a 9% share. Safari is fast, secure, feature-rich and works with plenty of useful plugins. Plus, a thriving open-source community is devoted to the upkeep of WebKit, the HTML rendering engine behind Apple’s browser.
Like a lot of Apple projects and products, Safari started out sucking but got immeasurably better over time. Safari is like Apple Maps, which took a beating on release but is now arguably the best map service out there.
So Steve Jobs was right after all. Safari is sweet — 20 years after it launched!
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
