Fake Steve Jobs is a Bostonian

The real Steve Jobs lives in Palo Alto, California.

Fake Steve Jobs, it turns out, lives in Boston. The New York Times has outed Forbes senior editor Daniel Lyons (photo at right) as the author of the hilarious (and heretofore anonymously-written) blog "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs." The publicity may not hurt, since a book by Lyons called "Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs" is on the way in October.

Here's a just-posted Forbes Video (chock full of plenty of ads) featuring Lyons calling in from his vacation place in Maine.

Back in 2005, Lyons wrote a widely-read Forbes piece on the increasingly vitriolic blogosphere. He also used to run a blog called Floating Point, which focused mostly on Linux and open source.

Here's some interesting Apple commentary from a Forbes opinion piece Lyons wrote in March 2006 on Windows Vista:

Given Microsoft's delays I can't believe open-source stuff still hasn't caught on for desktop computers. It's amazing, but people will wait months and months for products that are so complicated that no ordinary person can figure out how to use them.

Why not at least switch to an Apple Computer Mac? Apple's new operating system is stable, reliable and easy to use. The applications are simple, gorgeous and work well together. And they're here. Today. Steve Jobs must be waking up a happy man this morning.

(News.com has a reaction piece that I totally agree with: what's wrong with people writing anonymously, when no one is being hurt by it?)

One comment I can't resist: has the real Steve Jobs ever owned a button-down shirt and a boring rust-colored tie? This Dan Lyons is clearly a true Bostonian...