Brad Stone, a reporter for The New York Times, has uncovered the identity of The Fake Steve Jobs: it's Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine.

“I’m stunned that it’s taken this long,” said Mr. Lyons, 46, when a reporter interrupted his vacation in Maine on Sunday to ask him about Fake Steve. “I have not been that good at keeping it a secret. I’ve been sort of waiting for this call for months.”

Back in character, Fake Steve Jobs had some unkind words for Brad Stone:

If anyone can think of a cool way to use the name "Brad Stone" (all or part) as a verb, let me know. Maybe this:

brad, v.i.:

1. To bust a fellow filthy hack without mercy and spoil the fun for everyone, in a quest for personal aggrandizement.
2. To urinate in a pool.

Even better, I thought, was the punch-in-the-gut he reserved for bloggers: "One bright side is that at least I was busted by the Times and not Valleywag. I really, really enjoyed seeing those guys keep guessing wrong. For six months Dr. Evil and Mr. Bigglesworth put their big brains together and couldn't come up with the answer. Guy from the Times did it in a week. So much for the trope about smarty-pants bloggers disrupting old media. Brilliant."

Fake Steve, or rather Daniel Lyons, will be releasing a book in October entitled, Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody, and soon his blog will be moved to Forbes.com. Anyone who has followed Fake Steve's writings, however, will wonder whether or not he can be so... shall we say... honest in the future about his thoughts on Apple and Silicon Valley. Will he have to tone it down, or will Forbes embrace the character in full?

With his name and that of his magazine at stake, Daniel Lyons will probably have to be more cautious about what he says. But that's unfortunate, because the snarkiness and ridicule was guilty pleasure, even when bloggers like us or the "freetards" of the open source movement are the targets. It was... irresponsible, I guess you could say, and correspondingly so refreshing.

BTW: Now that we know who he is, let's invite Mr. Lyons to campus. Word.