The Dogcow is a bitmapped image first introduced by Apple Computer. It is the shape of a female dog with nose and spots that look like a cow, originally created in 1983 as part of the Cairo font by Susan Kare as the glyph for 'z'.
The image of the dogcow was used to show the orientation and color of the paper in Macintosh operating system printer page setup before Mac OS X. When the dogcow was removed in OS X, many people requested that Apple bring it back. That dogcow image had virtually reached cult status. Dogcows do not "mooo" (like a cow) or "woof" (like a dog). They say "Moof!" (or "!fooM").
It is an Apple WWDTS (Worldwide Developer Tech Support group) mascot. The original dogcow was named Clarus by Apple employees.
Microsoft used their own variant of the dogcow in their PowerPoint presentation software.
Excerpts from Technote 31
Technote 31 is legendary for its description of the dogcow.
- 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 it's raging glory. Like any talented dog, it can do flips. Like any talented cow, it can do precision bitmap alignment.
- 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. (from History of the Dogcow, part II)
Facts
- In the mid 1990's, when Apple installed an icon sculpture garden, Clarus the Dogcow was one of icons featured between two of the R&D buildings.
- Currently, Apple owns the copyrights to the words "dogcow" and "moof", but surprisingly not "Clarus".
- Rumors have it that Apple's developers still use Clarus as a mascot (outside and inside WWDTS), as well as to signify that certain things were still under development.
- Technote 31 was the infamous Apple technote describing Clarus and what she was. In numerous Technotes after that, Apple developers thanked Clarus, used the name in some of the code, used the "moof" sound in applications and inserted little tidbits about who she was. Another major technote describing more about Clarus and the dogcow was Technote 1031.
- Apple DTS engineer Brian Bechtel created and maintained a webpage at the ADC site, but the website has not been updated since the ADC site overhaul and cannot be found.
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