Amid SEC charges that Apple management had shifted the dates of stock options to benefit executives, including Jobs, Anderson, and former general counsel Nancy Heinen, the company took an $84 million charge in 2006. Jobs and Apple settled a shareholder lawsuit for $14 million, but avoided trouble with the SEC. Anderson and Heinen paid $3.5 million and $2.2 million in fines respectively, without admitting guilt.

The episode caused a major rift between Anderson and Jobs. Anderson had left Apple in 2004, but stayed on the board until the scandal led to his resignation in 2006. In the meantime, Anderson had joined Elevation Partners, a private-equity firm in Silicon Valley. As the stock-options scandal grew, Anderson and Jobs pointed fingers at each other, at one point issuing dueling press releases shifting the blame. Anderson has long maintained that Jobs knew more about the options chicanery than he has let on.

Elevation, which also counts famed Valley investor Roger McNamee and U2 frontman Bono as partners, backed Palm, a rival to Apple in the smartphone business, and recruited a former top Apple executive, Jon Rubinstein, as Palm's executive chairman. No one in Silicon Valley honestly believes this is a coincidence.

Forbes is another Elevation investment. The May 11 story, written by Bill Barrett and teased on the cover, centers on the 118-page transcript of a three-hour interview Jobs gave SEC examiners trying a case against former Apple general counsel Nancy Heinen, which the magazine obtained at some difficulty through a Freedom of Information Act. In the interview with SEC examiners, Jobs complained that the board was not looking out for him and he had to ask for a generous stock-options package, but maintained that he was largely unaware of the backdating and ignorant of the accounting consequences. (Backdating is not illegal by itself, but requires notice to shareholders and a charge to earnings, neither of which Apple undertook at the time it backdated options.)

Excellent journalistic work on Barrett's part. But here's the question: How did Forbes know precisely which document to ask for? It always helps to have well-connected sources. And it's hard to imagine who would be better placed to know the details of the case than Anderson.

Already, Stewart Pinkerton, an old magazine hand who had overseen the integration of the magazine's newsroom with the Web team, is "retiring," though our sources believe he was actually forced out by Lavin, an ambitious Forbes.com editor who previously worked at the New York Times. Lavin's next target, according to a tipster, is Tom Post, an editor high on the print magazine's masthead, who's been "shut out of the decisionmaking process."

What journalistic accomplishment is Lavin best known for among the Forbesians? Trying to censor his son's high-school newspaper. In 2001, when Austin Lavin was being impeached as student government president at Walt Whitman High School in a Maryland suburb, Carl, then an editor in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, sent a letter to a school superintendent demanding that copies of a school newspaper detailing the trial be removed and that a school television-news segment about it not air. (Lavin told the Student Press Law Center that he merely raised privacy issues about the airing of the story.)

Austin Lavin now runs a startup, Myfirstpaycheck.com, which he has been busily promoting on Forbes.com.

Bono is a founder of Elevation Partners, the Silicon Valley private-equity firm named after the U2 song. And Elevation just sank another $100 million into Palm, the troubled smartphone maker. Palm, which waited too long to switch its product lineup from electronic organizers to souped-up cell phones and whose Treo smartphone is showing its age, lost more than $500 million in the most recent quarter. Bono's firm now owns 39 percent of Palm.

He's also lassoed several former Apple executives into the Palm corral. Fred Anderson, a former Apple CFO and board member, is an investor at Elevation. Jon Rubinstein, a hardware executive who served as Jobs's right-hand man at Apple, resigned in 2006 — one day before the company's 30-year anniversary — and joined Palm a year ago. Rubinstein, the company's executive chairman, is working on a new family of devices that will compete with Apple's iPhone; the big unveiling is planned for the CES computer trade show next month.

The last CES was also the scene of the latest dig by Bono at Jobs. In January 2008, he appeared in a farewell video for Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. Later that month, he shilled for Michael Dell, the founder of the eponymous PC maker who once called for Jobs to shut down Apple and "return the money to shareholders." (Apple is now worth far more than Dell. Ha!)

And to think they were once so close. At an Apple event in 2003, Bono called Jobs "the Dalai Lamai of integration." One year later, Bono and Jobs introduced a U2-branded edition of the iPod. Jobs, who is rarely seen in public, attended a U2 concert in 2005, and Bono praised Apple as being "more creative than a lot of rock bands." In 2006, Bono promoted a red iPod for his Product (Red) charity scheme.

So what happened? The falling out has never been publicly explained, but I have a theory on what happened.

Apple's board of directors fingered Fred Anderson, the former Apple CFO, in a probe over stock-options backdating at Apple. In a public statement, Anderson blamed Jobs. Things got messy, and Anderson resigned from the board after reaching a settlement with the SEC.

At that point, Anderson was already at Elevation helping make Bono, whose net worth is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars, even richer. So Jobs wasn't just messing with Bono's pal; he was messing with his pocketbook.

It hardly squares with the Irish rocker's saintly save-the-children image, does it?

• Forbes.com superstar Lacey Rose will move to Los Angeles and will take the lead on the magazine's Celeb List.
• Scott Woolley, L.A. bureau chief, is moving back to New York to run a team there.
• Betsy Corcoran, who runs the Forbes.com team in the magazine's Silicon Valley bureau, is stepping back from editing to do more writing — but some in Forbesian circles think she might be interested in ousting Quentin Hardy, her replacement as the magazine's Valley bureau chief, as head of the combined print and Web operations in the Valley. Corcoran says, "No, no, no. Wrong."

Our tipster adds: "Please don't buy this bullshit about how nice things are between print and dotcom."

The ongoing intra-Forbesian unpleasantness aside, one big question looms over the coming reorganization: Who's going to run the whole show. Churbuck thinks Bill Baldwin, the magazine's editor, is brainy but clueless. Forbes.com editor Paul Maidment, insiders say, is just a "puppet" of the publisher, Jim Spanfeller, and Maidment's contract is up soon. We have a suggestion: Why not just make Bono, the rock star turned venture capitalist at Elevation Partners, editor-in-chief of the whole shebang?

It is disturbing to see internet service providers and technology companies profit from the so-called ‘disintermediation’ of the music business when so many music lovers are losing their jobs.

For instance, if AT&T and Google weren't getting so rich of other people's content, you'd be employed and able to afford the five dollar subscription to Bono's own digital distribution effort in a purely coincidental announcement, we're sure. (Photo by AP/Jacques Brinon)

If only the board had known what would become of that dinner. Bodnick and Bono's colleague Roger McNamee later gave $300,000 to the Wikipedia organization personally and helped arrange another $1 million in donations. Let's see: $1,300 for $1.3 million. Leaving aside what Elevation Partners hoped to get for that money, that seems like a pretty good return. Jimbo, have you thought about resubmitting the dinner tab?

(Image via Turn on, tune in, take off!)

For a couple reasons. It's a meritocracy. People really care about ideas here. None of the old school where'd-you-come-from stuff applies in Silicon Valley and I think that helps women.

• Google
• The Clinton White House
• Harvard College
• Harvard Business School

Handily for the PM, U2's music is available on the Japanese iTunes store. In November 2006, Bono gave then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a pair of his Armani Red campaign sunglasses for the same cause. (Photo by AP/Peter Dejong)

The problem first started when Jennifer — my daughter, she's 12 — made a lipstick print on the bathroom mirror. I was plucking my eyebrows and the lipstick was where my mouth was, and I realized I look like Cher. Not young Cher, now Cher. A reanimated corpse.

Lately I'd felt...unrelatable. You know the uncanny valley? How people respond poorly to something that looks almost human, but not enough, like Frankenstein or zombies or Polar Express? That's how I feel.

Whom do I want to feel like? Well, until recently I thought being me was okay. But last week was Job Day at Rory's school, and the night before, Rory comes up to me and says "Dad, I want the other kids to think you're cool. So can you tell them you're Fake Steve Jobs?"

Well that's sort of rude. No, not your iPhone, just that you answered it in the middle of our session.

Is that an Xbox over there? What's your Halo name? Ha, Headshot, no that's funny. My son used to have an Xbox. Well I caught him trying to hack it, so I called the cops.

Yes, I guess my kids are one of my biggest stress creators. But who in my life isn't? Steve Ballmer? Ha! You've seen the videos of him screaming? You should see him when Warren Buffett calls shotgun. And then he kicks the back of my seat the whole ride to Seattle. He's the reason Richard Branson put barriers between all the seats on his planes. Virgin America is all Ballmer.

Yes, Warren's more relaxing to hang out with, but he's no fun since he's such a cheapskate. That DNA test he got with Jimmy Buffett to see if they're related — guess which one paid for that? It makes it aggravating to go out with him. He won't even supersize so he always eats half my fries too. Then there's the whole death thing again. I wanted to get into chess in my old age, but it's always bridge. At the old folks' home. And between you and me, Buffett looks kind of nerdy.

I thought retirement would be soothing. Lounge around at home, walls playing some nice music, table reading me a story, kitchen making a snack. Instead Bono keeps dropping in, telling me about this rad party at Clinton's or Steve's or some other hippie pad, and bugging me to read his poetry. Honestly I thought the guy died in a skiiing accident years ago.

Oh, already? All right, see you next week. Should I pay at the front desk? Jeez, that much?

Couldn't I just help defrag your hard drive?

Well, a good source tells us so. But hard evidence backs up our tipster. Newsom's public schedule notes the normally mayor had no public events. San Francisco supervisor Sean Elsbernd filled in as acting mayor. And I got a somewhat exasperated spokeswoman in his office to confess, finally, that Newsom was out of the country over the weekend.

Last year, Newsom claimed that he isn't particularly close to Page or Brin. And here he is going to Page's wedding. A politician lying? Shocking.

(Photo by Steve Jennings/WireImage.com)

As I read through the posts, I noticed a number of themes consistent with another writer I know. References to Natali Del Conte, Nick Denton, and, crucially, Armani sunglasses.

The brats at the Armani store didn't even know about my Armani Bono Red sunglasses. They're the same shades I wore on the Elevation tour, priced at a reasonable $145, and 40 percent of the take goes to help your brothers and sisters still suffering. Plus if you're a blogger and getting kind of wrinkly around the eyes, they're a lot cheaper than plastic surgery. My good friend Nick Denton in New York bought a pair for one of his gang who's a bit over the hill. The man looks fantastic now. Fox TV called him on to talk about Google for 15 minutes. God's truth. It was the shades.

And yet he even looks like Bono! Here's a screen cap from a recent Boing Boing TV episode — Boutin is towards the end if you want to see his take on lolcats.

Could he be responsible for these directionless diatribes about Red products and how important Bono is? Well, they've both got the self-important part down. I pinged Mr. Boutin to see what was up.

BulldogPup83: Hey Paul, did you read Fake Steve Jobs this weekend?
ArmaniGlasses: Read it? I fucking wrote it.
BulldogPup83: I knew it!
BulldogPup83: Natali Del Conte and your silly sunglasses totally gave you away.
ArmaniGlasses: FOX cancelled on me though.
ArmaniGlasses: I think they found out I'm a libertarian which effectively means a Republican, and their whole idea was to have some whiny liberal blogger from San Francsico on to go WAAAHHHHH GOOGLE IS TOO POWERFUL.
ArmaniGlasses: What was your question again?
BulldogPup83: Oh nothing. Just saying hi.
ArmaniGlasses: Natali gave me away? I'm going to kill her.
ArmaniGlasses: Oh wait, she'll do that goddam scream if I do, aieee.
BulldogPup83: I know you think she's awesome and all, but do you really think that Bono would know who she is?
BulldogPup83: He barely knows who the other members of U2 are, never mind Natali Del Conte.
BulldogPup83: total giveaway
ArmaniGlasses: and you giiiiiiive yourself awwaaayyyy, and you giiiiiive yourself awaaaayyyyy, and you give ...
BulldogPup83: Thanks for the help, I appreciate your time Mr. Boutin
ArmaniGlasses: Wow, I haven't been called "Mr Boutin" since the last time the NY Times mentioned me.
BulldogPup83: I suspect you can have me killed. Must be respectful.
ArmaniGlasses: Xeni on line 1 here, gotta hop
ArmaniGlasses: toodles

Steve, don't get too pissed off, eh? Think of this as payback for the time you stayed at my guest cottage — you know, the one with the bathroom wall where everyone gets to sign their names in magic marker. How do you think I felt when I went to use the loo and found you'd scrubbed the entire wall clean — Clinton, Tutu, Jagger, Mother Theresa, all gone — and repainted it sparkling white with just the word "Steve" dead center in perfectly hand-lettered Myriad Sans Bold? It was beautiful, my friend, beautiful. But kind of fooktarded.

As CNET points out, it's all about the business ties. U2 lead singer Bono is the most stylish managing director at Elevation Parters, the Sand Hill private equity firm. Elevation cofounder Marc Bodnick is on the board of directors of iLike. Hence, the arrangement. Bonus for close students of the Valley's real social networks: Marc Bodnick's wife is Michelle Sandberg, the sister of Google executive Sheryl Sandberg, who's married to former Yahoo Music chief Dave Goldberg, who's an iLike advisor. Got that?

I'm sure with their brains and resources, they've already figured out a way around Wikipedia's 501 (c) 3 status. Looks to me like Jimmy's about to be able to afford all the kimonos he wants now!

We think Wales might be talking to McNamee more about his for-profit venture Wikia than Wikipedia. But we're willing to listen if you know better.