Safari is Apple's browser that was born in 2003, in a relatively turbulent year for the world of browsers: in the year 2003 of our Mr. Jobs, in the world of browsers there was a complete monopoly of Microsoft in the market, where Internet Explorer had the greatest success and was only followed by Netscape Navigator, which was already in its last agony.
So if you want to know more about Safari, this magnificent browser for the Apple world, don't miss this article.
Who founded Safari and when?
In that context, where there was only one predominant browser on the market, at the Macworld Expo, on January 7, 2023, Apple decides to present an innovative that today is something very common for everyone: Safari browser, which became the default browser on Mac OS the first serious competitor to Internet Explorer until the arrival of Mozilla Firefox in 2004.
One of the features that more than one user fell in love with is its performance, since It was optimized for the old processors of the time, the IBM PowerPC, in addition to the rendering engine itself that It was tremendously fast and efficient..
Over the years, Safari has adapted to new changes on the web and in technology, with functions such as tabbed browsing, the Reader function, integration with iCloud and even the port that exists today for mobile and portable devices like the iPhone. Who was going to tell Steve that Safari would go this far?
How many users use Safari?
Being the built-in browser on all Apple devices, there really isn't an official user count of users and it would be somewhat difficult to manage.
Furthermore, Apple does not usually compile statistics taking into account the total active devices that they have browsed and that are used regularly, because having, for example, an iBook G3 (not to be confused with the MacBook) with Safari stored in a drawer not exactly being an active user of the browser
But in an estimated way It is estimated that active Apple products last year were about 2,2 billion devices that have connected to the Internet, and except for the Apple Watch, the rest have Safari as their default browser.
So we could say that billions of users use Safari as their Internet browser every day, making it one of the most notable in the world.
Where is Safari used the most?
If we had to focus on a statistic, we could say that in which Apple's market penetration is most significant It will be where there are the most active Safari users.
That is, countries like United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, several European Union nations and China They could be the regions where Safari is used the most as a web browser.
What languages are supported in Safari?
Safari has extensive language support, as many as macOS itself and its mobile derivatives. So if you are a speaker of Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Russian, any of the varieties of Chinese, Korean or Arabic, for example, you will not have problems using the browser.
But Safari not only stays with the most widely spoken large linguistic groups, but It is also compatible with minority languages that have little presence in the world, such as indigenous languages, specific regional dialects, or languages that are only spoken in certain parts of the world.
And if you were bizarrely curious about whether Safari supports Klingon or Elvish, we are sorry to disappoint you: Apple is not serious about developing for fictional languages, but if you are a language geek and you like these or others in particular, there are developers who have made modules to use them in Safari outside of the Cupertino company.
Is Safari safe?
Technically, we could say that Safari is as secure as any other major browser that is on the market and even more than some of the options out there.
Safari has many regular updates which guarantee that if there is a bug or vulnerability, it is patched as soon as possible.
But the important thing about Safari is how it is «give birth», thanks to Sandbox Apple's app environment, browser access to the operating system is limited and that helps us prevent the exploitation of its vulnerabilities to reach the heart of the system.
Furthermore, the focus on user privacy with the automatic cookie blocking, as well as the safe browsing filters and notices They make Safari a very robust and secure option for your web browsing.
What systems can Safari be used on?
Yes, there was a native version of Safari for Windows
As we have said, Safari is the default browser that comes with macOS and iOS, so it is present in basically all Apple products on sale today.
But things change when we talk about other operating systems, since Until 2012 there was a version of Safari for Windows.
The Windows app was terribly slow and unstable, with quite a few crashes, so it is not surprising that Apple decided to abandon that project because it was going nowhere. Furthermore, the emergence of Google Chrome and the new versions of Firefox made it not something notable either.
Instead, In Linux there was never any interest in the company to offer the browser, nor any intention on the part of third-party developers to port it. In the end, Apple's philosophy is not that it is very aligned with the OpenSource world, and we understand that things were not going to prosper on that side.
Still, there is a small chance that you can use Safari on both systems. And there are browser emulators such as BrowserStack o Sauce Labs, where you can try several apps through a single browser, but these apps are paid and more oriented towards web development.
You could also install a virtual machine with macOS, similar to BlueStacks, but I deeply doubt that it is the most operational thing in the world to run only Safari on a system that is not designed for it.