Once upon a time, a writer started a blog satirizing the life and business decisions of Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs. In the early days of the blog, you could actually picture the opinionated and sometimes-vulgar head of Apple saying some of the things that the blog – Fake Steve Jobs – attributed to him. As Apple’s stock ascended, the mystery writer who penned the site’s entries gained quite a following.

But the laughs could not go on forever. The first blow came when a New York Times writer discovered that Fake Steve was actually some tech editor at Forbes named Dan Lyons. Then, after announcing that he was leaving the personna of FSJ behind because he was so distraught over Steve Jobs’s poor health, many of his snarky followers lamented their loss – for the 5 minutes it took Lyons to realize that he couldn’t produce anything that anyone gave a shit about but Fake Steve. Of course, Lyons spun Jobs’s return to Apple as the reason for his return to FSJ.

With this return, no doubt fueled by the certitude that aping someone else’s success was the only gig that was going to put food on his table, the darkness descended. Dan’s resentment of the role he chose for himself as Fake Steve began to boil. FSJ began manifesting his hatred of Jobs and Apple in less and less satirical ways. Lyons penned an unflattering recounting of the “backdating scandal” called iCon. Trying desperately to make something more of his career than jetwash recycler for Apple’s CEO, Lyons took a job at Newsweek as a writer on their tech beat, where he got several additional opportunities to snipe at Apple while continuing to bear his teeth as FSJ.  The infectious disease known as hitwhoria, which had plagued Lyons his entire career, became chronic. His entries for both Newsweek and FSJ, now devoid of facts, logic and humor, are now strictly a repository for the self-loathing he feels having dedicated his best years siphoning real accomplishments from someone else – like some tech laureate lamprey. Most recently, examples of Lyons’s shark jumping include “screw the iPhone, I’m with Android!” and “the Macintosh is dead”.

If you look at Fake Steve Jobs now, you’ll see some of the most bitter, contrived and vacant writing of his career, designed only to pull in eyeballs. Some of TMA’s favorites:

Mocking Jobs’s comment at D8 defending the work environment at Foxconn, which include restaurants and a movie theater, playing a role in a series of suicides there: “Obviously we feel terrible about this but it’s important to keep things like this in perspective. Foxconn has restaurants and swimming pools. It’s a pretty nice place.” Stay classy.

Trying to make fun of Jobs’s habit of responding to emails he receives directly by “responding” to a writer’s question about why Macs cost more than PCs (wasn’t that the theme of a couple of commercials a while back?): “The times they are a changing, and very soon the all-purpose computer, where you can buy and run any software you want, will be obsolete, replaced by the iPad, which costs more and does less and only runs software made by Apple or approved by Apple and sold through Apple’s store. This is the future and it will be way better than what we’ve had so far…” This hits the Lyons trifecta of “bash Apple’s closed ecosystem”, “bash Apple’s price premium” and “bash Apple’s limited functionality”. A drinking game based on spotting these themes from the last month on FSJ is guaranteed to send you to the emergency room.

I could continue citing Lyons for pages but frankly every other sentence is laced with this kind of venom, as unfunny as it is accuracy-free.

So at long last, TMA has added another bust to the 2 man menagerie that is Douchebag’s Row. Daniel Lyons. Once an occasional provider of crafted snark, he has joined the other red-faced tantrum throwers who envy success – especially because his meager spoils came exclusively from being the jizzmopper of an icon.

Apple is a company that brings out the worst in some people.  Whether they be fanboy-bashers or CEOs of bloated software juggernauts, there’s something about Steve’s condescending little smirk that drives people absolutely batshit.  I get it.  I really do.  For most of these individuals, the knowledge that I work with a superior OS is satisfaction enough.  But for a select few, the magnitude of their assholery cannot be dismissed by that melodic C Major chord.  These are the members of Douchebag Row.  This series is designed to honor those who, through word and/or deed, have distinguished themselves as something more than mere assholes.

Let’s begin, shall we?

Thanks to the work of a few creative and prolific individuals, tech analysts have become a somewhat notorious bunch.  Many of them are hit-whoring contention-seeders whose journalistic integrity ranks somewhere between the World Weekly News (RIP) and the National Enquirer. So you’d think that pulling the first inductee of Douchebag’s Row from that cesspool would be a tough choice.  However‚ when it comes to gross inaccuracy‚ sycophantic bias and flat-out douchebaggery‚ one man stands head-and-shoulders above his peers.  Here he is in top form‚ comparing LG’s Prada phone‚ an early iPhone knock-off, to the real deal in 2007:

“I’d still give the Prada the edge because it doesn’t lock you to Cingular, comes from a company who actually has done phones before, has a removable battery and upgradable memory, and comes to market months ahead of its competitor.”

Ladies and gentlemen: I give you The Rob Enderle‚ Principle Analyst‚ Enderle Group.

I have a theory that the current crop of shitty tech journalists were spawned by some asexual (?) union between John Dvorak and Rob Enderle. Whereas Dvorak is probably insane and should (mostly) be pitied, Rob Enderle actually markets himself as someone who people should give money to for his insight.  A quick rundown of the client list on his website proves it: Microsoft, Dell and HP have all benefitted from this sage’s wisdom.  And would this list of clients contribute any bias Rob might have toward Apple?  Only if he’s writing about Apple.  The only thing rarer than a Cupertino bash backed with any sort of “quantitative analysis” or “fact checking” is a sentence that doesn’t run on like it came out of a 12 year-old on uppers.  Here’s a typical byte from 2007 on why you wouldn’t want an iPhone:

“Oh, if you have a tendency to leave your phone in public places or drop your phone a lot you won’t have it long.”

-Although these are non-destructive habits for cell phones in general.

“These things are clear targets for thieves and I can’t tell you the number of them I’ve seen with broken screens so, if you get one, make sure you get a protective cover.”

-I bet you can’t tell us how many.  Nor can you cite a source who could tell us how many.  Why don’t you just stick with non-specific quantities that sound like a lot‚ without any kind of messy verification process?

“It seems that mostly these are dropped when folks are rushing to pull it out of their pocket or purse or when they share them with others and the other folks drop them.”

-Man‚ not only do we get a “number of incidents” that clearly breaks into the “I can’t tell yous”‚ we get some very specific data on how these scenarios “mostly” play out.  My hypothesis is that this gem of a sentence was ejaculated under the influence of some kind of palsy stroke (Enderlism?).  It’s these savant frenzies that distinguishes truly great tech writing from the also-rans.  That’s some Pulitzer-grade shit there.

If Enderle ever got anything he predicted for Apple right, he might have landed in an “Arch Nemesis Row”. However‚ his “analysis” is so hilariously off-the-mark and so openly orally-fixated on his former-and-hopefully-future Windows clients‚ I have no doubt that the current title is far more appropriate.  To remind us why Rob is so deserving of this honor‚ I’ve picked a few of my favorite Enderlisms.  Although I refuse to link to any of his pages directly (sorry Rob; this is a distinguished honor, not a charity) feel free to Google his quotes to see his brilliance in its thoroughly schizophrenic context.

“Do you realize that many, I’m not saying all or even most, of the Linux supporters are like this, they have never coded anything in their lives, have never even played a video game, in fact the only reason they are supporting Linux is because it is a cause and their life lacks one.” August 2004

“It is interesting to note, and few seem to remember, that Microsoft helped Apple write the first MacOS under a project code named “sand” over two decades ago, but, like most Apple partnerships, this one ended badly.” Sept. 2005

“Take a look at these pictures of Philips prototypes and ask yourself, did Apple do the Xerox PARC thing again and simply swipe an idea from a company unable to bring it to market themselves?” Nov. 2007

An impressive body of work to be sure.  If this were the Academy Awards of Douchiness‚ John Dvorak and Paul Thurrott would be in the front row leading the standing ovation as Rob strode confidently towards the stage.

In closing: congratulations‚ Rob‚ on becoming the Inaugural Member of Douchebag’s Row. Because we know your mantra is “any attention is better than none”, we know you’ll accept this award as yet another indication that people are paying attention to you‚ and not in the spirit it was meant.