Apple on Safari with its own browser

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has unveiled his company's new web browser, called Safari, and took the opportunity to claim that such software innovation has placed Apple at the forefront of digital home entertainment.

Speaking at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Jobs demonstrated the Apple-developed browser which he claimed is the fastest available. It's "three times faster than (Internet Explorer) on the Mac."

Before the announcement, IE for the Mac had been the default web browser on new Macs. The bundling began in 1997, when Apple cut a five-year technology agreement with Microsoft that expired last year.

Jobs said: "It's a very minimal" user interface. "We want the contents of the page to be the star here."

Safari is available as a free download and runs on Mac OS X version 10.2.

Apple also introduced a new presentation application, called Keynote, which the company will be pitting against PowerPoint.

"We built this for me, and so I wanted to share it with you," Jobs said, adding that he used test versions of the software for all his Macworld presentations in 2002.

"Keynote imports and exports PowerPoint," Jobs said. The program also supports Adobe's PDF and Apple's QuickTime formats. Keynote will be available for $99.

Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg said the release of Keynote and Apple's web browser show that the company is "serious at not relying on Microsoft to deliver key applications to the Mac OS platform."

But these products also put the Mac in a precarious position, he said, particularly if Microsoft sees these new products as a reason to slow down how quickly it releases the latest versions of Internet Explorer or Office for the Mac.

"If Apple's products fail to deliver in terms of compatibility, Apple may well have put itself at risk of losing valuable platform support from Microsoft and not being able to supplant that loss with homegrown applications," Gartenberg said. "Nevertheless, this is a risky move that Apple needs to take."

Joe Wilcox writes for News.com