Filed under: Humor, Cult of Mac, Retro Mac
Blast from the Past: Clarus, the Dogcow
There are two kinds of people[1]. Say "moof" and some people will look at you a little funny. Others will laugh knowingly. The latter are acquainted with Clarus. She is the Apple dogcow. Developed as part of the Cairo icon font by Susan Kare, the dogcow eventually became the mascot of the Page Setup dialog box. Unclear as whether the picture was bovine or canine, the two taxonomies merged into the "dogcow", the creature who says "moof".
You can download a copy of Technical Note TN 1031 here (PDF). It's one of the few dogcow-related tech notes that still exist on the Apple server. For whatever reason, many of the original dogcow documents have been removed from developer.apple.com--you get redirected to the main page. MacFreek.nl has archived the text from Technical Note TN 31, the quintessential dogcow technote. This document answers the questions: "What is a Dogcow?", "But What Does This Have to do With the Macintosh?", and "Okay, So How Do I Draw a Dogcow?" It also points out that there are no known "cliff-dwelling dogcows" left in the wild.
In the end, Clarus the DogCow is a reminder that Apple was once smaller than it is now and that its employees actually had a sense of humor. You can find an excellent overview of the entire phenomenon at StoryBytes.
[1] By definition, there are the kind of people who divide people into two kinds of people and there are the kind who do not.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
AlMeister said 1:36PM on 1-15-2007
At least one person at Apple still has a sense of humour. From the Logic Express 7 Plug-In Reference Manual:
"A Klopfgeist (knocking ghost) is a ghostly little fellow, usually German, who
restricts himself to producing knocking and tapping sounds, unlike his big brother, the
Poltergeist. Audio Instrument channel 16 is fitted with a Ghost Buster facility—the
button labeled M."
(The Klopfgeist is a metronome in Logic. The button labelled "M" is a reference to the mute button).
...well at least I got a chuckle from reading that. YMMV.
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Chris said 1:33PM on 1-15-2007
Speaking of a sense of humor in the Mac community, whatever happened to "easter eggs"? Are there any good ones in current OSX apps?
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Moofius said 2:07PM on 1-15-2007
I feel a bit related to this fella >_>
Dunno why? :]
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Pepe said 2:31PM on 1-15-2007
Thank you for this fun, Apple tidbit. This is one of the reasons I love TUAW. Also thanks for the “pro-mateurish” interview with the ModBook guys!
Also, thank you AlMeister (poster 2) for your insightful and excellent comment. This is the reason I keep on hoping. I know there are many TUAW readers with a brain - and who are willing to use it - and not just stupid, whiny, pubescent idiots like we see taking over in many other comments...
Thanks :-)
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Matthew said 2:46PM on 1-15-2007
"Apple was once smaller than it is now and that its employees actually had a sense of humor "
I remember Dogcow well, but Apple's sense of humor is still around. Definitely.
Remember when the original iPod shuffle shipped? The foot note read "Do not eat."
There's also stuff here and there in the KB docs, too.
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Luke said 3:37PM on 1-15-2007
I remember this guy as a stamp in the old paint-esque app on OS 6 on my color classic. What was that program called again?
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Pepe said 7:08PM on 1-15-2007
Gotta love Wikipedia :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moof
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Mingo Hagen said 9:22AM on 1-18-2007
Another piece of dated Apple humor:
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY2kWyqdxOI
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Sam Highley said 4:54PM on 1-15-2007
I love Clarus so much, I named my business after him, many years ago:
http://www.clarusdesign.com/
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jwest said 8:18PM on 1-15-2007
I still have my Moof! t-shirt with Clarus on it. It must be close to 15 years old now. I never wear it because I want to be buried in it and it has to last. :)
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Steve Mills said 9:17PM on 1-15-2007
Hey, that looks like Dave Polaschek standing by Clarus!
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yuji said 10:48PM on 1-15-2007
moof can still be found in the image in the dev. document.
see fig 2-4 in
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/Upgrading_HIToolbox/upgrading_hitoolbox_tasks/chapter_3_section_4.html
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idogcow said 3:06PM on 1-16-2007
I missed seeing the 'Public Art' on the Apple Campus by a very small margin, employee I asked when we were driving 'round the Infinite Loop said they had recently "been Steve-d."
I held onto the hope after the rumour that they would be back up but in OS X style glory for a while but at this point I think we can all say that isn't going to happen.
At least I have my DogCow wristwatch to look at (one of these days I *really* am going to get off my butt and order a shirt from Susan K's website) as well as an homage eMail address or two....
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tonyola said 12:03PM on 1-18-2007
There used to be a (buggy) piece of software called ClickChange which allowed you to change elements of the mac interface. One cute thing it had was an animated "running dogcow" to replace the "wait" beach ball. I miss that...
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