Bruce the Yak was Final Cut Pro’s Clarus the Dogcow

I like to think I’m pretty knowledgeable when it comes to the weirdest corners of Apple history, but Cody Bromley’s recent blog post on a Final Cut Pro taught me I still have plenty to learn: On the Macintosh episode of Version History, David Pierce and Nilay Patel had a lot of fun riffing about Mr. Macintosh, Steve Jobs’s obscure concept for a digital cryptid who lives in your computer. About 15 years later, Apple actually shipped something very similar, except instead of a mysterious little man it was a yak named Bruce. If you left older versions of Final Cut Pro running for 12 hours or more, you might come back to a small brown creature grazing a patch of grass on your timeline. There were other ways to intentionally trigger him, but this was the most fun one. I mean, just look at this: It looks like Bruce was part of the very earliest versions of Final Cut Pro, as reported in 1999: An Easter Egg in Final Cut Pro, fondly known as “Bruce the Wonder Yak” is popping up on monitors everywhere. Over the last day or two Bruce has spooked more than one unsuspecting FCP editor, fearing the mild mannered bovine was the result of some sort of computer virus. But fear not, Yak herder and Final Cut Pro Chief Engineer, Randy Ubillos assures us “not to worry,” and that Bruce is just an “undocumented feature” of the software. However, sources in Cupertino have informed us that one problem concerning Bruce is the fact that people are addressing him as a “Cow.” An Apple spokesperson was quoted as saying, “A little sensitivity people! Save those kinds of remarks for more deserving parties like John Dvorak.” If you want to see Bruce the Wonder Yak for yourself, go to “About Final Cut Pro” in the Apple Menu, let the splash screen scroll through the credits a few times, and in after a moment or two he’ll come out to graze on your desktop. Let him stay a while and he might even impart a few pearls of wisdom! Like many fun things, Bruce was murdered put to rest when Steve Jobs came back to Apple and squashed all Easter Eggs. In addition to writing about the history of Bruce, Bromley has brought Bruce back to life: Yesterday, I wrote about Bruce the Wonder Yak, a funny little creature who lived inside Final Cut Pro. The responses kind of blew me away. Quite a few people remember Bruce, and they miss him like I did. So I brought him back. And, no, this is not an April Fools joke. Call the Yak can be downloaded on Github. I am in love.