The Secret Bitcoin Whitepaper in Apple’s MacOS

Since 2017, every MacOS copy has concealed the Bitcoin Whitepaper in its operating system. The discovery was made in April 2021 by a MacOS Community Forum user, bernd178, who found the whitepaper hidden within a dormant function named Virtual Scanner II in the Image Capture Utility. Blogger Andy Baio recently brought the discovery back into the spotlight when he published it on his blog, Waxy.

Baio pondered the choice of the Bitcoin whitepaper, questioning whether it was simply a convenient, lightweight multipage PDF for testing purposes or if there was a secret Bitcoin supporter working at Apple. Another point to consider is Craig Wright’s ongoing, scandalous, unsuccessful efforts to copyright the Bitcoin whitepaper and sue those who host it. This hidden PDF could represent an act of rebellion by an Apple coder, given that Apple is too large for Wright to sue.

Baio explained that users can access the whitepaper by entering specific commands in the terminal app:

open /System/Library/Image\ Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf

Baio pondered the choice of the Bitcoin whitepaper, writing on Waxy, “Of all the documents in the world, why was the Bitcoin whitepaper chosen? Is there a secret Bitcoin maxi working at Apple? The filename is ‘simpledoc.pdf,’ and it’s only 184 KB. Maybe it was just a convenient, lightweight multipage PDF for testing purposes, never meant to be seen by end users.”

The reasoning behind including the PDF may remain a mystery, but many will be eager to see if it appears in MacOS 14, set to launch later this year. Additionally, it will be intriguing to see if Apple addresses this issue through patches rolled out to MacOS users.