On June 13, 2003, Microsoft announced that it was ceasing further development of Internet Explorer for Mac and the final update was released on July 11, 2003.

Microsoft stopped releases for the product on December 31, 2005, and they removed the application from their Macintosh downloads site on January 31, 2006.

[5] This release added support for HTML version 3.2, Cascading Style Sheets, Java applets and ActiveX controls.

At the 1997 Macworld Expo in Boston, on August 6, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates announced a partnership between Microsoft and Apple.

Amongst other things, Apple agreed to make Internet Explorer the default browser instead of Netscape Navigator.

Version 4 included support for offline browsing, Dynamic HTML, a new faster Java virtual machine and Security Zones that allow users or administrators to limit access to certain types of web content depending on which zone (for example Intranet or Internet) the content was coming from.

The most publicized feature of Internet Explorer 4.0 was support for Microsoft's Active Channel technology, which was intended to deliver regularly updated content that users could personally tailor to their interests.

At the following year's San Francisco Macworld Expo on January 9, 1999, Microsoft announced the release of Internet Explorer 4.5 Macintosh Edition.

The Windows version of Internet Explorer 5 had been released a year earlier, but used the Trident layout engine.

On June 13, 2003, PC Pro reported that Macintosh Business Unit general manager Roz Ho had confirmed that aside from updates to fix security problems, there would be no new versions of Internet Explorer from Microsoft.

Acid1 is included as an offline Easter egg, accessible by typing 'about:tasman', in Internet Explorer 5 for Mac OS with the text replaced by the names of the developers.