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Forget the standard print dialog: ClarusX2014 is changing orientation one print dialog at a time
Recently, Apple marked a major Mac anniversary. Celebrate the next 30 years of Macintosh by ditching this guy and replace him with a classic Clarus in your print dialog. Roby Sherman's ClarusX2014 offers a full rewrite of ClarusX2005, escorting dogcattle into the age of Mavericks. It provides an AppleScript-based utility that updates your page setup and print dialog icons. You'll need administrator privileges to install any of the supplied custom icon sets shown at the top-right of this post. If you're of an artistic bent and want to make your own 32 x 32-pixel TIFFs, you can use the utility to completely customize your experience. Me? I went with the QuartzClarus set. Now I find a smile whenever I print. Moof! Hat tip Mike Shields
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.
Original Mac OS icons available as limited-edition prints
Long for the good old days of classic Mac icons like Clarus the Dogcow or Pan Hand? Lucky for you -- Susan Kare, the 1983 designer of the original Mac OS icons, is offering prints of the famed icons for Apple fanboys (and girls) everywhere. As reported by The Mac Observer, signed and numbered prints of the Bomb, Spotted Dog, Smiling Computer, Trash and several other icons are available in several sizes ranging from 8.5" x 11" up to 30" x 40" and are priced between US$89 and $499. The limited-edition prints are up for sale over at Susan Kare Prints. Since Ms. Kare was the designer of these icons, she has personal stories to share about each of them. About the Spotted Dog she says, "This icon was designed to be a spotted dog character in the Cairo 'hieroglyphic' font that shipped with the original Macintosh. Perhaps because the spots looked a little bovine, some people referred to the image as a dogcow, and imagined that the sound it made would be 'Moof.'" We've seen some interesting items created in the image of Apple products: an iPhone quilt made by a grandmother, an iPad cutting board and even a giant iPhone wedding cake. Up until 1998, Apple's corporate headquarters had an "icon garden" full of planted OS icon sculptures. Here, courtesy of Ms. Kare, we have the real thing for sale by the designer of the original OS icons. One has to wonder, though, will Apple Legal send out any cease and desist letters to such an important former employee? [via The Mac Observer]
First Look: Ramp Champ adds carnival fun to your iPhone
If you've seen Kevin Smith's Dogma, you know that a key character ends up incapacitated for much of the film as a consequence of his/her unusual obsession with the carnival game Skee-Ball. The whole uncomfortable situation could have been avoided with an iPhone or iPod touch and the new app from the Iconfactory and DSMediaLabs, Ramp Champ. The game brings the sounds and skill of classic carnival ball-toss challenges right into your pocket with a great deal of style and fun. The $1.99 Ramp Champ app [iTunes link] provides four separate levels of ball toss challenges, ranging from three rows of clown targets to a rather familiar garden of bitmapped icons. Each level provides scoring & prize opportunities for knocking down the clowns, fish, invaders or icons; if you match one of three bonus conditions for the level (including, on the icon garden board, tracking down the elusive dogcow), you'll get an award for your excellent performance. After each session of tossing, you collect prize tickets that you can turn in at the app's gallery of virtual stuffed stuff -- fuzzy dice, anyone? Aside from the four levels that ship with the app, there are four more levels (featuring unicorns, ninjas, teeth and tiki!) that will be available for in-app purchase at $0.99 per 2-level pack. Beyond the straightforward-yet-addictive game physics (you may find your thumb aching after a while as you press a little too hard to flick the ball), the biggest draw of Ramp Champ is how stunningly pretty it is. Although we are often spoiled by the visual effort and consistency of Iconfactory projects, the team has really outdone itself with Ramp Champ. Every corner of the screen is participating in the carnival look and feel of the game; even the sound and music design feels 'right.' For such a simple game, it's surprisingly immersive. While the game is a visual delight, unfortunately it shares a characteristic with many other 1.0 iPhone apps; it's a wee bit crashy, at least in my first day of playing. The app documentation suggests a device restart to clear out memory before trying to play. As Touch Arcade points out, the flick-to-toss gameplay is similar to the ad-supported app Paper Toss; if you find it hard to control the ball rolls in that game, you'll probably be challenged/frustrated by RC as well. Here's a screenshot gallery from Ramp Champ. %Gallery-70921%
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.
Moof and other Mac Icon Shirts
Susan Kare designed the original icons for the Macintosh as well as some for many early popular software programs. She's responsible for both the Moof the Dogcow and the error bomb icons, for instance.And now she's opened up a Cafe Press shop to sell her famous icon designs on t-shirts. Yes, you can get Moof on a t-shirt. Or the error bomb, the watch, or the alert icon.This is definitely getting added to my wishlist. I really want a Dogcow shirt.
