Apple quietly removed the Bitcoin whitepaper and the Virtual Scanner II program from the most recent macOS Ventura 13.4 beta.
The latest MacOS Ventura 13.4 beta included a test scanner tool named Virtual Scanner II, which Big Tech removed on April 25. As a result, the Bitcoin white paper was removed, according to the Apple-focused news site 9to5Mac.
Apple Removes Bitcoin Whitepaper From MacOS
Apple will not release a new version of its operating system that includes a digital copy of the original Bitcoin whitepaper that has been kept secret on Macintosh computers for more than five years, according to Tuesday’s report from AppleInsider.
The whitepaper’s existence is explained by the possibility that it was utilized as a convenient tiny test file. Possibly a Bitcoin investor or added as a joke. The test app’s developer was involved in both.
Three weeks ago, the late discovery of the PDF document went viral, but it was just the most recent of many easter eggs that Apple (or, more likely, its staff) have hidden over the years. Millions of Apple consumers didn’t appear to have seen it until 2020 when designer Joshua Dickens tweeted about it. In April 2021, someone who read his post created a thread in Apple’s support forums.
However, it didn’t attract further notice until renowned technologist Andy Baio wrote about it last month.
“Of all the documents in the world, why was the Bitcoin whitepaper chosen? Is there a secret Bitcoin maxi working at Apple?” Baio asked. “Maybe it was just a convenient, lightweight multipage PDF for testing purposes, never meant to be seen by end users.”
Even Satoshi Nakamoto, whose alias Craig Wright has long claimed to use, alleged that Apple violated his copyright in response to the finding. Wright had previously obtained a court order requiring the removal of a copy of the paper from the website Bitcoin.org in 2021, but the website refused.
According to participants in Apple’s Beta Software Programme, the file, as well as the other components with which it was initially bundled—a test driver for a virtual scanner to enable developers to work with the operating system’s image capture module—are not present in the future version 13.4 of MacOS Ventura. The files, concealed in system files, were never meant to be found by common users.
There was a picture of a sign at Treasure Island in San Francisco next to the PDF of the Bitcoin whitepaper. 9to5Mac commented
This pretty much confirms our original theory that both the Bitcoin white paper and the internal tool were never meant to be found by regular users.
Later, Baio claimed that an insider at Apple had informed him that the whitepaper’s existence had been reported as a developer work ticket last year and assigned to the same individual who had initially entered the document into the system. But the ticket wasn’t being used at the time.
“They’ve indicated it will likely be removed in future versions,” Baio wrote.
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