Safari is 20 years old: a look back at its slow evolution in 7 key dates

2003: birth of Safari

It was in 2003 that Apple laid the first brick of Safari software as we know it today. Steve Jobs presented the browser that year at the Macworld Expo event in San Francisco. The former Apple CEO is not stingy with superlatives, describing the browser as being the fastest ever seen on Mac, and notably capable of displaying a web page in 3 times less time than Internet Explorer. The latter was, before Safari, from 1998 to 2003, the main browser on Mac.

2007: Safari arrives on iPhone

Steve Jobs, again, revealed in 2007, the year the first iPhone was released, the iOS version of Safari. It is also this year that the browser arrives on Windows.

2008: Google joins the dance

In 2008, Apple saw the birth of what would later become its nemesis:Google Chrome. The Mountain View giant's browser will indeed experience inexorable progression in the following years, quickly reaching first position as the most used web browser on Mac and PC.

2010: the iPad also benefits

In 2010, Apple launched the iPad. Obviously, Safari is the flagship browser of the Apple tablet and pre-installed automatically, like on iOS and macOS.

2017: the fight for privacy

Safari gains a major addition this year: theautomatic and default blocking of third-party cookies, underpinned by the technology named in EnglishIntelligent Tracking Prevention. With it, privacy gains by preventing users' browsing information from being tracked by different sites and services for advertising purposes.

2020: the start of extensions, the end of Flash

In 2020, Appledrops support for Adobe Flash in Safari. Flash was for a long time a standard widely used by internet browsers, particularly for the integration of videos, games and animations on web pages. But over time, the technology became too cumbersome to persist in the face of the rise of the next generation web programming language, HTML5.

Another major new feature for Safari this year, reserved for the macOS version of the software:opening to extensions.

2021: extensions on iOS and numerous interface changes

In 2021, Safari and on iOS and iPadOS finally benefit from web extensions. At the same time, all versions of the browser become more ergonomic and gain functions such as tab groups and collaborative work by tab.

Today

In 2023, you should know that Safari is considered themost efficient browser on macOS, both in terms of use of processor and RAM resources and display speed. Few competitors manage to do as well. This is because its engine, WebKit, isparticularly well optimized on the Mac system. Firefox, or even Chrome, each use their own engine andcannot achieve the same performance as Apple's native solution. On the other hand, it's a completely different question if we are interested in the functionalities, which remain quite limited in Safari compared to the competition.

Let us nevertheless note the existence of interesting and relatively unknown WebKit alternatives:Orion, including support for Chrome and Firefox extensions, andiCab, with an austere interface, but with unique characteristics.

On iOS, all browsers are based on WebKit. The question of speed and performance therefore does not have the same weight. The choice of software will be made more based on the user's habits, their preferences in terms of interface and other more “practical” parameters. Be careful, however, in the futureit could bethat Apple opens up more competition on this subject in the future and allows third-party browsers to use other web engines.

Let's finish by mentioning the latest ranking of Safari on desktop:2022 dataplace Apple's solution in3e positionin popularity among Mac and PC users. For a long time, Safari sat in second place, far behind Google Chrome. But it is Edge, from Microsoft, which has managed to take the lead in 2022. Google Chrome still remains unbeatable, however, even to this day.

Happy Birthday Safari!