Apple has created some of the most iconic icons, if you’ll excuse the redundancy, in the history of computing. Right from its earliest computers: the trash can, the smiling Mac, the "Command" key symbol, or the little watch that appeared while the computer was thinking. These symbols managed to explain complex functions using just a handful of pixels. But among all of them was one particularly strange creature that ended up becoming one of Apple’s most beloved mascots of the time. Let’s talk about Clarus.
It all started with a letter in the Cairo font
Clarus was born in 1983 while Susan Kare was working on the graphics for the original Macintosh. The designer created Cairo, a typeface made up of small drawings that could be inserted just like letters. Let’s say it was something like a collection of emojis, although it would still be many years before we started calling them that.
Each key hid a figure. And behind the letter "z" was a small spotted dog. It was a simple, charming drawing built from the same tiny squares that gave the entire Macintosh its personality. It had legs, a tail, spots, and an expression that was difficult to describe. At the time, it had no name and no story. It was simply one of the many drawings in Cairo.
In fact, Susan Kare was also involved in other symbols from that era, including the pirate flag that flew above the Macintosh team’s building. Her work helped make a computer, something that until then could seem serious and complicated, feel more human and approachable.
From a font to the print window
The little animal could have remained inside Cairo forever, but it was given an unexpected job. Apple needed an image to show page orientation and size in the LaserWriter’s print settings. And this little dog was perfect for the task.
Its body made it easy to see whether the page was in portrait, landscape, upside down, or enlarged. With a single image, it could explain something that would otherwise have required several lines of text.
That is how the little animal began appearing in the Page Setup window. And if we want to remember what those interfaces looked like, we can try and play with several classic Mac systems on this website, where we can travel back in time and try some of the oldest systems created by Apple.
Clarus: a dog or a cow?
But the more the animal appeared throughout the system, the more obvious a small problem became: was that really a dog?
Over time, the original drawing was modified. And to some people it was clearly a dog. But to others, it looked like a cow with spots and small horns.
Apparently, in October 1987, Apple engineer Mark Harlan started asking his colleague Scott Zimmerman what on earth that creature was. The story goes that during one conversation, one of them started saying, "Dog!", the other replied, "Cow!", then came another "Dog!", followed by another "Cow!"… and they could have carried on like that forever.
What is said to have happened is that Zimmerman, finally giving in, ended the argument by declaring: "It’s both, OK? It’s a dogcow. Now, will you get out of my office?" And that is how this new species was born inside the Mac.
Clarus speaks, and it says "Moof!"
The joke did not end there. Mark Harlan realized that if the creature was half dog and half cow, it did not make much sense for it to bark, nor did it make sense for it to moo. The solution? They combined both worlds into a single word: "Moof!" (from "moo" and "woof"). That was how this creature gave life to both a new animal species and a new kind of sound.
In April 1989, Harlan wrote Technical Note No. 31 to answer, with plenty of humor, all the questions surrounding the animal. It established that her name was Clarus and explained, among other things, that she was two-dimensional and could hide by turning sideways.
The original technical note about Clarus looks like an official document, but it is actually an elaborate inside joke packed with amusing details. Even so, Apple distributed it among developers, and it helped turn Clarus into the mascot of technical support.
The Dogcow leaves the Macintosh
From then on, what had started as a small drawing inside a typeface gradually became an inside joke known among Macintosh developers, engineers, and enthusiasts. She became the new mascot.
Her image began appearing on badges, T-shirts, mouse pads, developer disks, QuickTime demos, and even in the icon garden at Apple’s former headquarters. It was a reflection of the playful culture surrounding the original Macintosh, the same culture that turned a team of engineers into pirates and city names into typefaces full of personality.
Over the years, however, Clarus gradually disappeared from Apple’s systems. But we are still talking about her today, because although she may have been nothing more than a pixel drawing in a print window, she achieved something very special: reminding the world that even a "serious and cold" computer tool could have humanity and a sense of humor.
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