Mr. Lyons said he invented the Fake Steve character last year, when a small group of chief executives turned bloggers attracted some media attention. He noticed that they rarely spoke candidly. “I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if a C.E.O. kept a blog that really told you what he thought? That was the gist of it.”

Mr. Lyons says he recalled trying out the voices of several chief executives before settling on the colorful Apple co-founder. He twice tried to relinquish the blog, but started again after being deluged by fans e-mailing to ask why Fake Steve had disappeared.

Though many speculators have guessed Fake Steve was an Apple insider, Mr. Lyons says he has never interviewed Mr. Jobs nor written a story about the company. “I have zero sources inside Apple,” he said. “I had to go out and get books and biographies to learn about a lot of the back story.”

Mr. Lyons said writing as Fake Steve became addictive. He developed a unique lexicon and catalog of insults for the character. Bill Gates is Beastmaster, and Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, is Squirrel Boy.

Last month, when a reader asked Fake Steve about Apple’s succession plan, he replied: “My plan at this time is to live forever and to remain in charge here, though perhaps with fewer restrictions on my power. The truth is, I am not human — I am a man-god, son of Zeus, born to mortal woman but fathered by the ruler of the gods, lord of thunder.”

Mr. Lyons receives around 50 e-mail messages a day through the blog, many with ideas for posts, and says the site had 700,000 visitors last month. Recently someone claiming to be Mr. Jobs’s daughter, Lisa, wrote to tell him, “You don’t sound at all like my father, but your blog is hilarious.”