Cody Bromley writes about Bruce the Yak, a silly easter egg found in early versions of Final Cut Pro. Bruce would periodically wander onto the timeline, imparting nonsensical “pearls of wisdom.” Bromley describes the FCP team’s excitement over Bruce:

After FCP shipped, the team eagerly waited to see who would be the first person to discover the yak and what their reaction would be. They eventually saw it on 2-pop.com, an online forum run by Ken Stone that was hugely popular with the early FCP community. Stone was a giant among early FCP adopters, spending years writing tutorials and helping young filmmakers learn the tools through 2-pop and his companion site kenstone.net. Shortly after 2-pop launched, FCP project manager Will Stein asked engineer Ralph Fairweather to “volunteer” to monitor the forums, and that’s where the team found the first Bruce sighting. Someone posted that they thought they had a virus, because “the cow seemed kind of threatening.” The team loved it.

(Reading the name “Ken Stone” immediately brings back memories of Creative Cow back in the 2000s. The guy was just prolific.)

Across versions of FCP, there were different ways of invoking Bruce, but this one is particularly fun:

FCP 4.5 (2004) had the most elaborate ritual: press Option-J to open the timecode jump dialog, type “Bruce” with a capital B, carefully erase the shift icon with the arrow keys (don’t press return!), and a “Call the Yak” button would appear that you could drag into any toolbar.

Bromley has now resurrected Bruce in the form of Call the Yak, an app for modern Macs that lives in your menu bar and can call up an accurate recreation of Bruce!