Discovering the Bitcoin Whitepaper in Every Modern Copy of macOS

If you want to run your first test script, you try to produce Hello World. If you want to run your first test print, print out the Bitcoin white paper from 2009. At least that’s what Apple thought; the company has been putting the paper in macOS since 2018, for unclear reasons.

Developer Andy Baio discovered the paper by accident when he tried to repair a printer in his operating system. He found that the Bitcoin whitepaper was seen as a preview option in the printer settings. The white paper is on disk as simpledoc.pdf as a sample document for a scanning tool that is not enabled for users by default. According to Baio, it can be called up from the terminal with the command open /System/Library/Image Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf.

It is not known why Apple includes the famous document in the OS. According to Baio, the company has been doing that since 2018; the whitepaper can be found in all versions of macOS since 10.14.0 Mojave. The document is also included in the most recent version, 13.3 Venture. In 10.13.0 High Sierra, the document cannot be found.

The Bitcoin white paper dates back to 2009 and was written by a person or group calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto. The document explains how Bitcoin and the blockchain work. Baio speculates that the document could probably be a good test document for printers. He says he has spoken to sources who say that an issue is open, but that there has been no response for a year.