Mac Os X 10.3 Panther ~upd~ Jun 2026

Microsoft had recently halted development of Internet Explorer for Mac. In response, Apple launched Safari. Built on the KHTML engine (the ancestor of WebKit, which now powers Chrome), Safari was lean, fast, and featured Google search built directly into the toolbar. It introduced tabbed browsing to the Mac mainstream, though tabs were tucked away (you had to enable them in Preferences). Safari instantly became the default browser, leaving IE for Mac to die a quiet death.