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Moshi releases Clarus headphones at CES
Moshi, makers of a variety of accessories for your Mac and iPhone, have announced a new set of headphones at CES called Clarus. They have two interesting characteristics, one inside the headphones, and one outside. Outside they are a little different than a number of in-ear style headphones in that they have the ear loop to hang over your ear and keep the earpiece in place. They do offer a few sizes of covers for the earbud itself, which is handy, but even better is that you don't have to rely on that to hold them in your ear. Made of a semi-rigid material, the loop is soft to the touch and flexes enough to let you wiggle them around to get the perfect fit. Inside, there is a great big difference: there are two drivers! Generally headphones will have a single driver, and that driver has to be all purpose since there's only one. This tends to mean you have to choose whether you want clear crisp sound in the high end, or a bumping thumping low end. With two drivers, you no longer have to decide which you prefer. I don't know how they managed to fit two drivers into these compact little headphones, but I can tell you how happy I am that they managed to do it. I got to listen to a pair on the floor, and unlike some booths that were using a specific sample or only one variety of sound to show off, I was allowed to plug in my iPhone and play whatever I wanted. First off, putting them on was really easy. That flexibility in the earpiece helped me settle them in, and then I tried samples from four different songs (a mashup, guitar-heavy rock, electronic, and acoustic guitar/piano) and got really impressive results. They were a variety of bitrates, and everything sounded clear and balanced in every sample. It was really nice to get to hear something I was really familiar with so I could tell how it would sound compared to all the other places I listen to the same music. There are other details that are nice, like the braided cover on the cord, the iPhone mic/control capsule on the cable, and the color detail on the earpiece to help put them in the correct ear. Retail price is $200 and they are available now at Moshi's website. More Moshi headphones seen at CES
Apple-themed April Fools' day pranks through the years
If it wasn't apparent already, today is April Fools' day and Apple's 35th birthday. To celebrate this occasion, Network World has compiled a list of popular Apple-themed April Fools' jokes from the past. Some are from Apple employees and some from the news media, but almost all of them are entertaining. The most famous joke involves Clarus the Dogcow. Created by Susan Kare, designer of the happy-faced Mac computer icon, the black and white dog-slash-bovine became an integral part of the Page Setup dialog box in early versions of Mac OS. Discussion of the cow-like dog icon continued internally within Apple's Developer and Technical Support (DTS) group until one member, Mark "The Red" Harlan, let loose the dogcow and named it Clarus in an Apple Technical document released on April 1, 1989. This off-the-cuff joke has taken on a life of its own and is now a part of Apple's pop culture history. Other notable April Fools' jokes include Macworld's 2004 "wicked fast," triple-CPU system called the PowerMac G5 Cubed or iFixit's genuinely clever 2010 teardown analysis of the Apple tablet, otherwise known as the Newton MessagePad 2000. Oh yeah, we can't forget the April 1, 2006 date when we announced that TUAW was closing up shop.
Keep track of your dogcow with Clarus
We've talked about pet management software before on TUAW. It's software that allows you to keep track of important information about your companion animals, including when the next vet appointment is, what medications they're taking, names and addresses for vets, groomers, and more. Clarus 1.0 is the latest application of this genre, and it looks like a keeper. The £15.00 GBP program, which appears to have been named after the mythical dogcow of Apple lore, can be downloaded for a free trial. Purchasing the application eliminates built-in limits on the number of contacts, insurance policies, medications, and vet visits. Unlike other pet management packages, KennettNet built Clarus from the ground up as a Leopard app, and it takes advantage of integration with Address Book, iCal, Quick Look, and AppleScript. Clarus is localized for English, French, German, and Spanish Mac users. What I find most useful about this program is how it stores all of my pet's care information in one place. Should my cat Ruby require emergency medical care, I have all of her records at my fingertips. If she runs away from home, I can print a "missing" poster with one click. Clarus gets two paws-up! Moof!
Appleworks dies. Long live iWork
ComputerWorld UK reports that AppleWorks has been retired by Apple after 23 years. AppleWorks, aka ClarisWorks né StyleWare provided a complete, low-cost office suite for Macintosh computers all the way into the PowerPC era. I wrote my dissertation in the program and until a couple of years ago I still used it to create our family holiday cards. I was surprised by the news as I had assumed the program had been put to rest years ago, buried along-side Hypercard. Instead, it took the release of Apple Numbers to finally kill the old workhorse. iWork '08 imports AppleWorks documents including spreadsheets, presentations and word processing files.
Blast from the Past: Clarus, the Dogcow
There are two kinds of people[1]. Say "moof" and some people will look at you a little funny. Others will laugh knowingly. The latter are acquainted with Clarus. She is the Apple dogcow. Developed as part of the Cairo icon font by Susan Kare, the dogcow eventually became the mascot of the Page Setup dialog box. Unclear as whether the picture was bovine or canine, the two taxonomies merged into the "dogcow", the creature who says "moof". You can download a copy of Technical Note TN 1031 here (PDF). It's one of the few dogcow-related tech notes that still exist on the Apple server. For whatever reason, many of the original dogcow documents have been removed from developer.apple.com--you get redirected to the main page. MacFreek.nl has archived the text from Technical Note TN 31, the quintessential dogcow technote. This document answers the questions: "What is a Dogcow?", "But What Does This Have to do With the Macintosh?", and "Okay, So How Do I Draw a Dogcow?" It also points out that there are no known "cliff-dwelling dogcows" left in the wild. In the end, Clarus the DogCow is a reminder that Apple was once smaller than it is now and that its employees actually had a sense of humor. You can find an excellent overview of the entire phenomenon at StoryBytes. [1] By definition, there are the kind of people who divide people into two kinds of people and there are the kind who do not.
