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Dogcow

From WikiMac, Everyone's Mac Knowledgebase

Moof the Dogcow, in colour, on a Page Setup dialogue box (Simplified Chinese SimpleText, Mac OS 9.2.2)

The Dogcow is a bitmapped image first introduced by Apple Computer. It is, essentially, 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 dogcow's image was used to show the orientation and colour of the paper in the Mac OS Page Setup dialogue box in system versions before Mac OS X. When the dogcow was removed in Mac OS X, many people requested that Apple bring it back (and third-party utilities that did the trick actually existed). That dogcow image had virtually reached cult status. Dogcows do not "mooo" (like a cow) or "woof" (like a dog). They say Moof!

The original dogcow was named Clarus by Apple employees.

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