Apple UI : Death of a Dogcow

A list of particular problems with Apple’s UI “innovations”, in the hope that others will add their own gripes. [Studio Log]

Apple loves it when people go on about how the Macintosh got a lot of UI design principles right long before the competition. We all love stories about the Icon Garden, and fondly remember Clarus the Dogcow (mascot of Apple’s Developer Tech Support department) in the Page Setup dialogs; how she symbolised all that was great about the Macintosh UI. Ah, the good old days.

Banished from Mac OS X, we all held out hope that she would return one day, gracing a Print sheet in some bright future where Windows and its mind-bending punishments were only a distant memory. Alas, it seems that instead of simply being put out to pasture in Cupertino, Jobs may have actually imposed a final solution. Clarus may now be dead.