Moof! A history of the dogcow
The dogcow was first widely seen in public during 1984 when the Apple Macintosh was first released. Since then, the dogcow has adapted to perform many different functions, from indicating orientation to being used as a mascot. The dogcow has developed an almost cult following by a select group of the Apple faithful.
The first sighting was as part of the Cairo font that shipped with the Macintosh. The strange cross between a dog and a cow was created by Susan Kare who could be seen as the mother of how we interact with the graphic interface (through certain illustrated representations known as icons). Responsible for designing the icons and fonts to ship on the Macintosh, Susan created the happy mac icon, the trash and every other icon that helped you communicate with the Mac. It was from this modest beginning that the dogcow became a highly illusive aura throughout the Apple user base.
It wasn’t until 1987 when Mark Harlan who became fascinated with the diversity the dogcow had at illustrating concepts such as inverting images. The creature could be seen in the LaswerWriter Page Setup Options and started to slip into common place around Apple corporate and eventually their users. Dogcow’s unique appearance of not quite a dog and not quite a cow was pushed through Apple’s offices at the bottom of memos. The dogcow’s first appearance in public was during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in 1988 when then CEO John Sculley wore a badge with a dogcow during his keynote speech.
Because of the animals unique genetics it can’t quite bark, nor can it moo. During one of Mark’s sessions bugging fellow employee Scott Zimmerman it was discovered that the dogcow made a “Moof!” sound. This sound was heard by a very select few after hunting down the animal on one of Apple’s regular developer CD’s that were distributed to software partners.
Since the inception of the dogcow by Susan Kare, and then publicised by Mark Harlan, the dogcow has been seen on badges, shirts and even in Apple’s icon garden. Unfortunately only three dogcows exist in the wild with the most popular known as Clarus who has not been sighted since big cats have inhabited the Macintosh operating system. Both dogcow and it’s Moof! remain property of Apple Inc and word is that the creature grazes somewhere in Cupertino.