The dogcow, named Clarus, is a bitmapped image designed by Apple for the demonstration of page layout in the classic Mac OS. The sound she makes is "Moof!", a portmanteau of "moo" and "woof". [1] Clarus became the archetype of surrealistic humor in the corporate culture of the original Macintosh group, particularly as the mascot of Apple’s Developer Technical Support as officially documented in Technote #31. [1] [2]
In 1983, the dog icon had been created by Susan Kare as the glyph for "z", as part of the Cairo font. Later, when redesigning the classic Mac OS "Page Setup" print dialog box for the LaserWriter, an example image was required. [2] According to HCI engineer Annette Wagner,
For the LaserWriter there was a print dialog with checkbox options that could all be mixed with each other. We needed some kind of graphic that would show flipping horizontal, flipping vertical, 2% reduction, mirror effects, six or eight kinds of effects. We had this typeface of crazy symbols that came off the Macintosh that Susan Kare had originally done, that had all these craze critters inside it. I had to alter the dog image pretty significantly, not only to make it larger but to give it a clear front, clear back, clear top, clear bottom, and I had to change the spots on the dog specifically so that when the 2% reduction was in effect you could clearly tell the difference.
— Oral history of Annette Wagner [3]
The new dog graphic had a more bovine look.
Did they have a heated conversation and holler "Dog!" "Cow!" "Dog!" "Cow!" back and forth? We may never know. But one thing is clear, Mr. Zimmerman finally gave in and said, "It's both, OK? It's called a 'dogcow.' Now will you get out of my office?"
— History of the Dogcow, Part 1 [4]
On October 15, 1987, the term "dogcow" was coined by Scott Zimmerman. [4] [5] She [6] was later named Clarus by Mark "The Red" Harlan, as a joking reference to Claris, Apple's business unit for office software at the time. [5]
The Clarus icon became one of the giant pieces of pixel art in the Icon Garden in the front yard of the Apple Campus at 1 Infinite Loop; the Icon Garden has since been removed. [2]
Apple's Developer CD Series of the 1980s features a dogcow logo on the discs. [7]
The latest references to the dogcow came in the documentation for the Swift programming language, which uses the word "dogcow" as an example of the use of Unicode characters to name constants and variables; [8] and in a sticker pack in Messages. [9]
In the first beta of macOS Ventura, the dogcow returned to the page setup window, [10] and in iOS 16 entering 'Clarus' or 'Moof' [11] results in the keyboard suggesting the 'dog' and 'cow' Emoji. [12]
There is a life-size picture of a dogcow conveniently located in the Finder. Look under "Page Setup..." Now look under "Options." Walla [sic], there is the dogcow in all its raging glory. Like any talented dog, it can do flips. Like any talented cow, it can do precision bitmap alignment.
— Apple Technote 31 [1]
Some people say that the dogcow hails from the sunny shores of the Middle of Nowhere. This location in the south Atlantic can be found in the Map control panel; simply type "Middle of Nowhere" and click Find. (For a small fee, these same people will tell you where they last saw Elvis.)
— Develop magazine [7]
The sound she makes is "Moof!", [1] and in early versions of Apple Developer CDs one section was known as "Moof!".[ citation needed ]
The dogcow symbol and "Moof!" were proprietary trademarks of Apple until the registration was cancelled in 1999. [7] [13]
The disappearance of the Icon Garden and of Clarus from Apple's products is seen by MacWorld as a symbol of the draining of culture and character from, and an increase in blankness and austerity in, Apple's products over the years. In a 2015 retrospective, the magazine said Clarus "came into being through quirkiness and serendipity, and you could say it has no business in a grown-up, commercial operating system. It makes no real sense, and wasn’t really there on merit or through strategic planning" and represented a company that was "kooky", "idiosyncratic", and not dominated by rules. [2]
macOS is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and laptop computers, it is the second most widely used desktop OS, after Microsoft Windows and ahead of Linux.
The history of macOS, Apple's current Mac operating system formerly named Mac OS X until 2011 and then OS X until 2016, began with the company's project to replace its "classic" Mac OS. That system, up to and including its final release Mac OS 9, was a direct descendant of the operating system Apple had used in its Mac computers since their introduction in 1984. However, the current macOS is a Unix operating system built on technology that had been developed at NeXT from the 1980s until Apple purchased the company in early 1997.
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Claris International Inc., formerly FileMaker Inc., is a computer software development company formed as a subsidiary company of Apple Computer in 1987. It was given the source code and copyrights to several programs that were owned by Apple, notably MacWrite and MacPaint, in order to separate Apple's application software activities from its hardware and operating systems activities.
The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is usually held at Apple Park in California. The event is usually used to showcase new software and technologies in the macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS families as well as other Apple software; new hardware products are sometimes announced as well. WWDC is also an event hosted for third-party software developers that work on apps for iPhones, iPads, Macs, and other Apple devices. Attendees can participate in hands-on labs with Apple engineers and attend in-depth sessions covering a wide variety of topics.
Susan Kare is an American artist and graphic designer, who contributed interface elements and typefaces for the first Apple Macintosh personal computer from 1983 to 1986. She was employee #10 and Creative Director at NeXT, the company formed by Steve Jobs after he left Apple in 1985. She was a design consultant for Microsoft, IBM, Sony Pictures, and Facebook, Pinterest. As of 2007 Kare was an employee of Niantic Labs. As a pioneer of pixel art and of the graphical computer interface, she has been celebrated as one of the most significant designers of modern technology.
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Macintosh File System (MFS) is a volume format created by Apple Computer for storing files on 400K floppy disks. MFS was introduced with the original Apple Macintosh computer in January 1984.
Apple Inc. uses a large variety of typefaces in its marketing, operating systems, and industrial design with each product cycle. These change throughout the years with Apple's change of style in their products. This is evident in the design and marketing of the company.
Newton OS is a discontinued operating system for the Apple Newton PDAs produced by Apple Computer, Inc. between 1993 and 1997. It was written entirely in C++ and trimmed to be low power consuming and use the available memory efficiently. Many applications were pre-installed in the ROM of the Newton to save on RAM and flash memory storage for user applications.
MacHack was a Macintosh software developers conference first held in 1986 in Ann Arbor, Michigan in partnership with the University of Michigan. The conference was organized and operated by Expotech, Inc. The final (18th) MacHack conference took place on June 19–21, 2003. In 2004 the conference was renamed ADHOC. 2005 was the last year of the ADHOC conference.
Mac OS X Snow Leopard is the seventh major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers.
Two major families of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc.
Apple Color Emoji is a color typeface used on Apple platforms such as iOS and macOS to display Emoji characters.
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Mac OS is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The Macintosh operating system is credited with having popularized the graphical user interface concept. It was included with every Macintosh that was sold during the era in which it was developed, and many updates to the system software were done in conjunction with the introduction of new Macintosh systems.
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Somewhere along the line I baptized the dogcow "Clarus". Of course she's a female, as are all cows; males would be referred to as dogbulls, but none exist because there are already bulldogs, and God doesn't like to have naming problems.
Constant and variable names can contain almost any character, including Unicode characters: let π = 3.14159 let 你好 = "你好世界" let 🐶🐮 = "dogcow"