Apple’s Mac computers apparently hide the original Bitcoin whitepaper in which Satoshi Nakamoto presents the Bitcoin network. This book would be inserted as a PDF in all modern MacOS devices.
The Bitcoin in Apple Computers White Paper
According to a blog post published on April 5, technologist Andy Baio reveals that all MacOS devices come with a copy of the Bitcoin whitepaper in PDF format. In all likelihood, this has been done since the Mojave release in 2018.
Andy Baio explains that he made this discovery when he was trying to repair his printer. Wanting to scan a document with a wireless scanner called “Virtual Scanner II”, he saw a file appear. The man reassures that it was the first time that he saw this file which had just appeared.
He goes on to say that the Virtual Scanner II displayed a photo by default, until he decided to change the media type. When changed from “Photo” to “Document”, he saw the bitcoin white paper appear. He was therefore very surprised to make this discovery when he just wanted to repair his printer.
The book appears in several versions of Apple devices
After this discovery, Andy Baio decided to investigate to find out if this had ever happened. But, he says he found virtually nothing online. He used a 2020 post by designer Joshua Dickens on Twitter to find the location of the file on his device.
Then he created a command prompt usable in the MacOS command line interface named Terminal. This prompt was intended to allow other people to find the whitepaper in their devices.
He talked about it around him and friends who also use Mac devices were able to verify it by opening the file in turn. After his experiments, Baio came to the conclusion that Satoshi’s white paper is in “every version of macOS from Mojave (10.14.0) to the current version (Ventura)”. However, High Sierra (10.13) or earlier versions are not affected.
According to Baio, this multi-page PDF was not intended to be viewed by end users of the devices since it is a test file.
Nobody knows why modern macOS devices contain Nakamoto’s whitepaper. Apple has not yet commented.