Why did Apple feel the need to make a web browser?
We built our own browser because we didn't want to depend on another company for a critical application.
We built our own browser engine because we wanted to use the technology in more things than a browser.
We built that engine small and fast because Bertrand Serlet would have shot me if I had done otherwise. :)
I might add that Chimera -> Camino was the beacon of hope before Safari came out, and once it got going on Mac OS X, other folks got so excited they demanded a cross-platform version which eventually became Firefox.
In general, the need for a non-sucky non-bloated web browser alternative to IE reached a critical mass at that time, not just on Mac OS X.
I'd never heard this and I can't seem to find any references to it. Would you mind pointing me in the right direction?
Technically, they were both faking the platform native element to some degree, but they were at least trying to fit in with their respective target platform(s).