Steve Jobs wanted to call “Safari” browser Freedom, Alexander or iBrowse

[RaduTyrsina]

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Have you ever wondered how the mobile browser you use every day on your iOS device got its name? The process wasn’t an easy one, and it resembled very much the pains and labors parents go through when trying to decide the name of their new baby. New information recently uncovered tells us the story of Safari. Apparently, late Apple CEO was planning to call the browser “Freedom”.

This window into Apple’s history was provided by former Cupertino programmer Don Melton who posted this story on his blog. Melton was one of the key people in the development of Safari and other WebKit projects. He also revealed that Jobs had other names in mind for Safari like “Alexander” or “iBrowse”. Melton described Steve Job’s attempts to change his colleagues’ minds by throwing all kinds of suggestions at them. Apparently, he best liked the “Freedom” option:

“Steve [Jobs] spent some time trying that one out on all of us. He may have liked it because it invoked positive imagery..it spoke to our own freedom from Microsoft and Internet Explorer, the company and browser we depended on at the time.”

The other options sounded just as bad for Don:

“For over a year, the internal name for the browser application was “Alexander.” Not only had we gotten very used to calling it that, the string “Alexander” was all over the code and buried in its resources.”

After all these years, it is indeed strange to think that the first mobile browser to ever mix a desktop kind of browsing experience with multi-touch technology could be called anything else than Safari.

Source: DonMeltonBlog