This sentiment, shared by TONS of people, is why I wonder why more people haven't tried to create a nasty virus for the Mac. Just to get the satisfaction of "shutting everyone up."
This must have been 3 or 4 years ago?.... before Safari was released. I think IE may still be loaded at the factory, but it's not the default browser any more.
IE 5 for the Mac is much slower for surfing than either Safari and Firefox/Mozilla, but it was actually the first completely standards-compliant browser on the market (for any OS). It's odd that Microsoft's best browser was created for a Mac. It hasn't been updated since 2000, but IIRC, it's still more compliant than current versions of IE 6 for Windows. Not sure about IE 7.