Apple hides Bitcoin whitepaper in modern Macs

Every crypto fan should be familiar with Satoshi Nakamoto. Behind the pseudonym is the inventor or the inventor team of the oldest and most important cryptocurrency in the world: Bitcoin.

In the white paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” published in 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto presented his idea of ​​a decentralized currency. The central point against the background of the financial crisis: Bitcoin should not be controlled by states or banks.

The nine-page Bitcoin white paper is said to be on every Mac running at least version 10.14.0 (Mojave) of Apple’s macOS operating system, according to tech blogger Andy Baio. macOS Mojave was first released in 2018.

Baio has the Easter egg apparently hidden by Apple according to their own statements found while trying to repair his printer. The Bitcoin white paper is hidden in a PDF file called “simpledoc.pdf”, which apparently serves as a test document for a device called “Virtual Scanner II”.

If you want to look it up yourself and are using a Mac, enter the following command line in the terminal: “open /System/Library/ImageCapture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf”. The PDF will then open automatically.

There is still no answer to the justified question of why Apple hid the Bitcoin white paper of all things. An official comment from the group is still pending. It is assumed that a developer was simply looking for a multi-page, but not too large PDF file for test purposes.

The nine-page white paper is only 184 kilobytes. Accordingly, Mac users should never have seen it. What can probably be ruled out: Apple certainly did not choose the white paper to support Bitcoin.

A second example shows that the file is used for test purposes. Because in the folder in which the “simpledoc.pdf” is located, there is also a photo called “cover.jpg”. Again, it’s not entirely clear why it’s on apparently all Macs.

In any case, the picture is said to be a photo taken on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. Photographer Thomas Hawk has pointed out that in 2008 he took a almost identical photo shot.

Attentive readers will have noticed that the year in which the photo was taken is the same as the Bitcoin white paper was published.

As Baio added, citing a tip from an insider, the existence of the PDF was internally pointed out almost a year ago. However, the person who was responsible for the integration has not yet responded.

It is likely that the Bitcoin white paper and test photo will be removed in one of the next macOS versions.