Daniel Lyons

Dan Lyons holding up an Apple turtleneck for size.

Daniel Lyons (born 1960 in Massachusetts) is an American writer. He is a senior editor at Forbes magazine. He has written a book of short stories, The Last Good Man (1993), a novel, Dog Days (1998), and a fictional biography, Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody (2007). He also writes The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, a popular blog and parody of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, under the pseudonym Fake Steve Jobs.

Fake Steve Jobs

Before the identity of Fake Steve Jobs was revealed by New York Times technology correspondent Brad Stone on August 5 2007, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs was referenced by numerous online and print media such as Engadget, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Der Spiegel, El Mundo and CNET. Fake Steve Jobs ranked 37th in a Business 2.0 article entitled "50 Who Matter Now."

Previous guesses as to the blog's author included Leander Kahney of Wired (particularly at some of Fake Steve Jobs's Briticisms), Eric Savitz of Barron's, John Paczkowski of All Things Digital and Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times.. Another suggestion was that Jack Miller, the webmaster/blogger of the As the Apple Turns website, which was seemingly abandoned in 2006, but which is still live, could possibly be Fake Steve Jobs.

At the The Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital technology conference, the real Steve Jobs was quoted as saying "I have read a few of the Fake Steve Jobs things recently and I think they’re pretty funny." During a later joint interview, Bill Gates quipped that he was not Fake Steve Jobs.

In October 2007, he released the book Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody, under the pseudonym "Fake Steve Jobs". Although based largely upon previous material published on the The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog, the book creates a more cohesive narrative focusing especially on the stock options backdating scandal looming over Steve Jobs in late 2006 and early 2007.

Nicknames used in the blog

In the blog itself, Fake Steve Jobs uses a few fairly well known nicknames for the people he writes about. The most common one is something with the suffix “-tard” (as in retard), as in Microtard for someone in or with Microsoft or freetard for someone in the Free Software movement. Other nicknames include:

• The Borg – Microsoft (the Borg is a fairly common nickname for Microsoft)
• Beastmaster or Kermit – Bill Gates
• Faceberg (later ZuckerBorg) – Mark Zuckerberg (the founder of Facebook)
• Goatberg – Walt Mossberg (technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal)
• Mary Jo Creepy – Mary Jo Foley (a ZDNet blogger, who is a specialist in Microsoft)
• Monkey Boy or Uncle Fester – Steve Ballmer
• My Little Pony – Jonathan Schwartz
• Squirrel Boy – Eric Schmidt

Fake Steve Jobs is also known for his very “creative” geography, for example showing a picture of Ottawa for Toronto, confusing Lebanon with the city of Lisbon and Austria with Australia.

External links

• See also online jobs
• The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
• Personal blog Dan Lyons
• A video interview of Daniel Lyons about Fake Steve Jobs on Microsoft's Channel 10
• Unabridged interview with Lyons by Wallstrip's Lindsay Campbell on the release of his book, Options, October 28, 2007
• Daniel Lyons speaks at Google about his blog, his book, and the real Steve Jobs
• Daniel Lyons Speaks at Cody Books in Berkeley, CA