Apple Hides Bitcoin Whitepaper On Every MacBook, Why?
Is tech giant Apple a secret Bitcoin supporter or an employee acting on his own? This is the question being asked by the Bitcoin community after independent blogger Andy Baio revealed in a post that the Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in all modern copies of macOS.
As Baio explains, a copy of the BTC whitepaper has been included since version 10.14.0 and has not been removed since. It was included in all versions of macOS from Mojave (10.14.0), released in September 2018, to the current version, but not in High Sierra (10.13) or earlier.
The blogger became aware of the Bitcoin whitepaper by accident. “While trying to fix my printer today, I found a PDF copy of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper,” said Baio, explaining that the file is used in the Image Capture utility as a sample document for a device called the “Virtual Scanner II”. which is hidden or not installed by default for everyone.
If anyone knows where it’s hidden, the BTC whitepaper is easy to find. Mac users just need to type the following command in the terminal:
open /System/Library/Image Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf
If users are running macOS 10.14 or higher, the Bitcoin whitepaper will open in preview immediately. Users who don’t know how to use a command line can use Finder and click, explained Baio:
Click Macintosh HD and open the System→Library→Image Capture→Devices folder. Control-click VirtualScanner.app and Show Package Contents, open the Contents→Resources folder, and open simpledoc.pdf.
Why Is Bitcoin Whitepaper Hidden in macOS?
As Baio writes, it is unclear why the BTC whitepaper was chosen over all documents in the world. “Is there a secret Bitcoin max working at Apple?” or was it really a directive from the top? “There is practically nothing about it on the internet”, says the blogger, who only observes:
The file name is “simpledoc.pdf” and it is only 184 KB. Perhaps it was just a lightweight, convenient multi-page PDF for testing purposes, never intended to be viewed by end users.
Baio received an anonymous tip from an employee who revealed that someone had reported the issue internally nearly a year ago. Notably, the issue was supposedly reported to the same engineer who put the PDF in there in the first place, and that person has not done anything or commented since.
Notably, Apple CEO Tim Cook came out as a Bitcoin supporter in November 2021. The CEO of the second most valuable company in the world answered “yes” when asked if he owned Bitcoin or Ethereum. He revealed that he invested in cryptocurrencies “for a while”.
He also stated that it is reasonable to maintain a “diverse portfolio”. However, he ruled out the possibility that Apple will follow other companies like Tesla or MicroStrategy and invest in BTC in the future.
At press time, Bitcoin price was trading at $28,021.
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