Clarus, the Dogcow : Moof Museum
A museum dedicated to Clarus, the Dogcow (Apple DTS mascot : she can flip, she can do precise alignment, and she moof!)
A museum dedicated to Clarus, the Dogcow (Apple DTS mascot : she can flip, she can do precise alignment, and she moof!)
Below you'll find the most commons questions regarding Clarus, The Dogcow. To go deeper into details, read the full history and browse our collections.
Essential facts:
Clarus is a virtual small animal, a sort of genetic hybrid between a Dog and a Cow (a Dogcow).
Clarus was born in 1983 in Apple Labs during the Macintosh creation under the pen of Susan Kare.
At that time she lived in Cairo font but she has an archaic form and no name.
Then in 1986 she mutate (in Printing Labs) to become the pixel creature that show user the printing settings for LaserWriter printers.
Since 1986 she was recognize as "Clarus the Dogcow" and soon become the mascott of the DTS Apple Team.
In 2004 she totally disappears from Macintosh and Apple Inc.
In old Mac systems (from version 4 to 9.x) simply open the printing settings dialog (LaserWriter printer selected) and watch the paper sheet on the left that figure setings.
You can see Clarus inside.
Unfortunaly, with MacOS X (since 2000), Clarus disappers from MacOS (see "Where was gone Clarus ?" below)
Moof is the sound Clarus does.
Note that it was Muu in Slovenia.
2 women create the design and 2 men create the folklore around Clarus.
The first design was created by Susan Kare for MacOS in 1983 deep into the Cairo font.
Annette Wagner, who work on first LaserWriter driver, mutate her for the printing setings dialog during 1986.
Mark Harlan and Scott Zimmerman named her and made lot of research around 1987-1988.
They promote her and soon become the mascott for Apple DTS team.
They also discover her cry : "Moof!"
Yes,
Clarus was unique.
But Mark Harlan told she got some cousins, unfortunally he did not provide accurate informations about them nor information to found them...
People are fooled by the many pictures of Clarus and variations that was made by fans, but there was only one "Clarus, the Dogcow", the rest is only representations. Her real nature was hard to understand, because she reside in MacOS as a bunch of pixels and seems to appears in every macintosh : but Clarus is unique, so we can say that Clarus is probably kind of ubiquitous.
She's a female.
Also note that its species was "Dogcow", if she was a male the species would be called "DogBull".
Clarus in the Apple Icon Garden
photo : George Sakkestad for Cupertino Courrier
Clarus, leave MacOS with the version 10 (MacOS X). No one know the real story, but some speculation buzz on the web.
You also have to know that giant Clarus portrait was removed from Apple garden (Cupertino) in 1998 when Steve Jobs went back to Apple Inc.
The more "accurate" buzz, told that when Steve Jobs went back and deal with Microsoft, Clarus was part of the deal (Bill Gates was jealous from Clarus).
So Microsoft oblige Apple to remove Clarus from OS X and now we can suppose Clarus was prisonner in B.Gates bunker...
But you know... rumors...
Another rumor was that Steve Jobs want Apple Inc go into the future and simply remove old things...
Apple Inc. trademarks "Dogcow" and "Moof!" until 2010.
The new trademarks list (since 2010) do not mention Dogcow nor Moof, but it's also written that all trademarks are not listed, so you've to ask to Apple lawyer to know the truth.
Clarus has never been registered and is used by other company for other purposes.
No not really. Clarus was basiclly a 2D pixel creature. So in real 3D world, as she stand front she can't be seen.
But there where many representation of Clarus in our world, discover our collections.
From 1993 to 1997 Apple put giant representation of original MacOS icons, uncluding Clarus ; but they were removed at the end of 1997.
Some fans build there own Clarus.
Clarus doing "Precison Alignment"
"Clarus, the Dogcow" has the special habbit to flip and invert.
She also Moof and can even "shrink to fit" or do "precise alignment", isn't it great ?
This sentence was part of TechNote 31 wrote by Mark Harlan in 1989. Several years later, Mark Harlan solved the mystery (in develop magazine), when he explained it was simply a phonetic transcription of the phrase "But I can't see the Dogcow !" in the Tamil dialect, which Sriram Subramanian had said to Mark over the phone. And, as the note goes on to explain ; Arabic systems don't include Clarus in their printer drivers - they get a horse instead! (the story do not tell more about a dog-horse).
We have not been able to get any screen capture of this horse. It was available on Mac Arabic System in the LaserWriter setting dialog with System 6.x
Yes.
Clarus is part of pop culture (for mac geeks).
Documents presents below are "copy" of the originals. The originals can't be found anymore at Apple Computer Inc web site.
Until 2004 a page (maintained by Brian Bechtel) host all official documents related to Clarus, but Apple change it's URL often and now it was lost...
So you can only view our copy (as acurate as possible) :
You can also visit "DogCow lore : Nest of the Dogcattle" from fantastic Internet Archives WayBack machine : last capture december 2003