Fake Steve Jobs blog ends its run

Daniel Lyons, the technology editor at Newsweek who has written a fake Steve Jobs blog for years, writes Monday that he’s stopping the blog now that the Apple CEO is taking a medical leave of absence.

Lyons writes, “In my final Fake Steve post I urged my fellow ‘filthy hacks’ (Fake Steve’s affectionate term for journalists) to leave Steve alone.

“Sadly, I’m pretty sure that won’t happen.

“I’m sure there will be stories where some reporter talks to people who know Jobs — his friends, his neighbors — and tries to wheedle out some tidbit of information.

“I fear there will be stories where some dirtbag (last time it was a guy from Forbes) hangs around outside bars near the Apple campus and ambushes half-drunk Apple engineers, asking them if they’ve seen Steve lately.

“I’m sure there will also be stories where a reporter talks to cancer specialists and tries to get them to speculate on what might be wrong with Jobs this time. They’ll talk about life expectancies for people, like Jobs, who have had liver transplants after suffering pancreatic cancer. They will try to make this all seem respectable. They will claim the cancer doc stories represent a kind of ‘teaching moment,’ an opportunity to explain some arcane medical stuff to the regular folk.

“They will rationalize the prying story by saying that Apple is a public company and investors need — nay, deserve — this information.”

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