Amaya Toman It's been an incredible twenty years since the launch of Internet Explorer 5 for Mac. Jimmy Grewal, who was one of the leading members of the responsible team, has recently been on his own blog shared his memories of the difficult period of the first (and last) launch of Microsoft's Internet browser for the Mac. It was quite a long and complicated road leading up to its launch at the Macworld Expo in 2000, and Steve Jobs really didn't make the arrival of IE 5 for the Mac any easier.
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According to Grewal, the MacIE 5 browser was worked on by a team of about forty "talented and determined people" from Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, based at the time in San Jose, California. Grewal joined the team shortly after graduating from college in June 1999, helping to design select features of the browser as well as managing its Mac OS X version.
One of the stumbling blocks with MacIE 5 was the strong similarity of its interface to Mac OS X's popular Aqua look—a similarity that Grewal says was really just coincidental. The idea for a new look for the browser was part of the intention to match the software with the hardware - Grewal's colleague Maf Vosburgh came up with the idea that if people were going to use IE 5 on a Bondi Blue iMac, the browser should be tuned to a similar design. However, the aforementioned look was still in the development stage at Apple at the time and was subject to strict secrecy (although there are also speculations that it was Apple, on the contrary, who was inspired by Microsoft for the creation of the Aqua look). Jobs was not too enthusiastic about the appearance of the mentioned browser, but at that time he could not argue with the similarity with the Aqua interface. So he decided to attack one of the browser's features - the Media Toolbar, used to support MP3 playback on the web - which he said was "competing" with QuickTim. It is interesting that the aforementioned Media Toolbar was created with the use of SoundJamp MP software, which Apple bought a little later as part of the creation of the iTunes platform.
Internet Explorer 5 for Mac was to be officially presented at Macworld on January 5, 2000. It used to be the custom for Microsoft products to be presented by someone from Microsoft's management, but in the case of IE 5, Jobs insisted on making the presentation himself. "It was an unusual request," Grewal recalls, adding that Apple agreed with Microsoft on specific points of the presentation. But in the end, Jobs did not mention either of them on stage. But he did not forget to indicate that the overall appearance of the browser is the result of using Apple standards.
But despite all the complications, Grewal says he and his team were justifiably proud of IE 5, and the media and public response to the browser's introduction was overwhelmingly positive. Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 for Mac was officially released on March 27, 2000, its last version saw the light of day in 2003. Not long after, Jimmy Grewal left Microsoft. He says of his experience working on Explorer for Mac that at times it was "pleasant as a wasp in the back of the body", but he says he doesn't hold a grudge against Apple as such.
Source: Apple Insider
