Dogcow

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Clarus the Dogcow

The Dogcow is a bitmapped image first introduced by Apple Inc.. It is the shape of a 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 the Mac OS page setup dialog box in versions prior to Mac OS X. HCI engineer Annette Wagner made the decision to use the dog from the Cairo font as a starting point for the page graphic. Annette edited the original font and created a larger version with spots more suitable for demonstrating various printing options. The new dog graphic had a more bovine look, and after the print dialog was released the name "dogcow" came into use.

When the dogcow was removed in Mac OS X, many people requested that Apple bring it back. The dogcow image had virtually reached cult status. Third party developers have since worked to fill this gap.

It is an Apple Worldwide Developer Tech Support group mascot. The original dogcow was named Clarus by Apple employees. The sound she makes is "Moof!"

Microsoft used their own variant of the dogcow in their PowerPoint presentation software, with a bell, and a fatter body.

[edit] 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." voila, 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.
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)

[edit] Facts

In the mid 1990s, when Apple installed an Icon Garden, Clarus the Dogcow was one of the icons featured between two of the R&D buildings. There is even a QuickTime VR movie of the Icon Garden. [1]
Currently, Apple owns the trademarks "dogcow" and "Moof!", but not "Clarus".
Versions after 4.2 of Apple's "Disk Copy" application feature the dogcow wagging her tail and doing flips at the busy cursor.
Technote 31 was the famous 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, although many of the pages from that site regarding the dogcow are available on Jory's Dogcow Shrine. The original site is available on the Internet Wayback Machine.
According to Technote 31, when mowing tall grass, paper ends up in the grass clippings. Much of this is said to be shredded dogcow, when the dogcow turns itself to newspaper as a last resort.
The dogcow appears in SimLife.
Jamie Marshall has created a Dashboard widget of Clarus named, appropriately enough, Moof! This widget made a brief appearance at WWDC 06 during section 9 of the Mac OS X "Leopard" (10.5) presentation.
ClarusX2005 is a Mac OS X Tiger haxie written by Roby Sherman that returns the dogcow to her proper place as a printer page setup dialog icon.
Clarus currently appears as a sample Address Book entry in Apple's Mac 101 support site.
Clarus appears in Technote 2179, dated 2007-01-22.