Andy Ihnatko Is Fake Steve? The Evidence is Very Flimsy
The Sitening blog claims to have unearthed the identity of Fake Steve Jobs — it’s veteran Mac columnist Andy Ihnatko — but the evidence is flimsy at best.
The “proof” is that FSJ’s computer has an IP address in Boston — and Ihnatko lives in Beantown. Ergo sum.
The Sitening blog obtained FSJ’s IP address by sending him a special URL in email. When FSJ visited the special URL, it revealed his IP address: 68.160.21.224, which comes from the Boston area.
But I’m skeptical. Andy’s a humorous writer, but the styles are different. And FSJ is obviously a reporter or editor with a Silicon Valley business publication — Forbes or Fortune, or such like — not a specialist Mac writer. The subject matter on FSJ’s blog ranges too far from Apple — he’s obsessed with Sun and Google as he is with Steve Jobs.
When Wired News first contacted FSJ earlier this year to set up a sponsorship deal, my colleague Kevin Poulsen, the ace hacker, used the headers of FSJ’s emails to track him to a hotel in New York, then a public park or cafe in New York (he was probably using free WiFi), and finally suburban Boston.
We assumed Fake Steve was traveling that day. Maybe he took a business trip to New York to his home in Boston. But who knows? Maybe he works in Boston, or that’s where his girlfriend lives?
The only one who knows FSJ’s identity for sure is my boss, Wired News EIC Evan Hansen, who’s keeping mum.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: 
