Honestly If i had to guess, I'd say the answer is as simple as: a freely distributable, easily verifiable document was needed for testing purposes, and some engineer thought it'd be a cheeky little easter egg to use that file as bitcoin was starting to gain back traction in 2019 after it's first big surge and fall the years prior.
This reminds me of the (encrypted) copy of Microsoft Bob shipping with every Windows XP CD ever <a href="https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-magazine/cc565089(v=msdn.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN" rel="nofollow">https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-...</a>
Cool, now I can add this to my `~/.bashrc` and easily view the whitepaper whenever.<p><pre><code> btc_wp() {
open /System/Library/Image\ Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf
}</code></pre>
Check out the actual directory. There’s a bunch of stuff in there including a cover image that does show up in the interface of Image Capture. In two minutes of testing I haven’t quite figured out where to click to get it to preview the Bitcoin white paper but decent chance they needed a “simple document” PDF for something at some point and it came down to “why not the Bitcoin white paper?”
For what it's worth the virustotal page[0] for the sha256 hash[1] of the pdf file has it marked as "File distributed by Apple" so it must have been known for some time now? Would be interesting to know when that notice was added but there is no archive of the site unfortunately.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/b1674191a88ec5cdd733e4240a81803105dc412d6c6708d53ab94fc248f4f553/details" rel="nofollow">https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/b1674191a88ec5cdd733e424...</a><p>[1]b1674191a88ec5cdd733e4240a81803105dc412d6c6708d53ab94fc248f4f553
I'm going to sound like a grouch, but that's not my intention. If the bitcoin PDF was chosen as a test file, it seems far too basic to be a valuable test for an Apple developer to be using (after all, PDFs can be insanely rich) and I have to believe that Apple is full of people that have Adobe on speed dial or are otherwise sufficiently creative to make a nice Apple-grade PDF that stretches the format to its limits.<p>It's possible that the test file is for an end user to verify function, not an Apple dev, I guess, but then in that case Id expect Apple to provide something much more clear (say, Apple logo with "if u can read this, great" rendered in multiple languages") that supported their aims of branding, lack of legal encumbrance, and international support.
> A little bird tells me that someone internally filed it as an issue nearly a year ago, assigned to the same engineer who put the PDF there in the first place, and that person hasn’t taken action or commented on the issue since.<p>What an absolutely foolish way to broadcast to your employer that you’re willing to leak information.
Every Samsung phone has a hidden picture of a chihuahua: <a href="https://lifehacker.com/every-samsung-phone-has-a-hidden-chihuahua-for-some-rea-1849812864" rel="nofollow">https://lifehacker.com/every-samsung-phone-has-a-hidden-chih...</a>
Another OS include is that Microsoft Bob was hidden in the Windows XP install CD, apparently as part of the copy protection scheme. Wonder if the Bitcoin paper has any function beyond its written content.
I still remember the Paula Abdul office background poster and the whole fiasco of BHA Carl Sagan code names. Easter eggs and codenames were supposed to be fun, not lawsuit material.
How long before Craig Wright, an Australian "academic" who has very dubious claims of being Satoshi and who has attempted to bully via the legal system, claims Apple owes him billions?
Why can't they clean up their OS distribution. This kind of content clearly does not belong there at least if it is practically hidden in there. There should be a reason why every file in the OS distribution is there. This kind of looks like Apple does not know what is in their OS. What else is there?
It’s a convenient way of backing up the document that can be used to re-create this impactful technology from scratch… may a disaster take place. Think like sending backups of human civilization into space. There are probably now hundreds of millions of copy of this file, pretty cool.
I remember one time installing Bob on a test machine in an IT lab running 32 bit XP.
Marvelously it ran, but frustrated my poor coworker who was didn't know what it was.
I bet it was Satoshi who put this in MacOS. it would make sense if Satoshi was the kind of person to hide in plain sight and leave small traces to find him/her.
Bag holders are going to try to spin this into a conspiracy theory to pump the value of BTC. Next they will be saying that Satoshi was Steve Jobs or some nonsense.
The answer may be a bit more mundane.<p>A theory: they needed an existing PDF to test PDF rendering. The Bitcoin paper was (1) handy, and (2) has a diverse variety of content in it, including images and math symbols.
> One other oddity: there’s a file called cover.jpg in the Resources folder used for testing the Photo media type, a 2,634×3,916 JPEG of a sign taken on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay. There’s no EXIF metadata in the photo, but photographer Thomas Hawk identified it as the location of a nearly identical photo he shot in 2008.<p>If I were Thomas Hawk, I’d be sending Apple a bill for the use of my photograph.
The interesting thing here is that I don't believe the Bitcoin whitepaper was released with any license. If someone could prove themselves to be the author they'd probably be able to make a case for a lot of money from Apple.
This is very likely because of this <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/06/29/uk-court-orders-bitcoinorg-to-remove-white-paper-following-craig-wright-lawsuit/" rel="nofollow">https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/06/29/uk-court-orders-...</a>?
This is like a slightly better version of <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/the-campaign-to-erase-the-image-that-accidentally-helped-entrench-sexism-in-tech/0zboc3bbp" rel="nofollow">https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/the-campaign-to-erase-th...</a> someone wanted to pick an example PDF and picked the bitcoin one. Just like in the article above back in 1973 they didn't realize the harm in what they were selecting as the sample photo. And maybe there is no harm with this PDF selection? We'll know in 2073!
184 KB * how many Macs on earth? I don't mean anything by this, just interesting thought experiment.<p>Was numbers.pdf not enough to accomplish what they wanted?<p>My opinion: I understand the OS is a big multi-team effort but this just not cool. It's not about the contents of the file or that it's about bitcoin.<p>Plain and simple: Don't ship files that don't need to be shipped.<p>All these files, if they are test files, should be in unit/integration test resources.
I hope Apple sees this as a bug and removes this in their next major update, hopefully an Apple employee files a radar and gets this removed.<p>This should have never been allowed on macOS, an endorsement of a pyramid scheme, borderline ponzi scheme, incinerating the planet and evading sanctions.<p>I use Linux and macOS and the former would never allow this to happen ever.