Steve Jobs-designed yacht launched in the Netherlands

Workers put the finishing touches to a yacht docked at the wharf of ship building company Royal De Vries in Aalsmeer, near Amsterdam, Netherlands, Tuesday Oct. 30, 2012. / AP Photo

THE HAGUE, Netherlands The sleek, white superyacht glistens under a gray autumnal sky, a posthumous testament to the design aesthetic of Steve Jobs.

Just over a year after the Apple founder died, the luxury motor yacht he commissioned and helped French product designer Philippe Starck make has finally slipped into an anonymous Dutch backwater.

Looking like a floating Apple store, it bears all the hallmarks of a new Jobs-inspired creation - crisp white lines, polished metal, glass. And secrecy.

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Steve Jobs: 1955 - 2011

Late Tuesday, shipbuilder Feadship announced it had launched the "78.2-meter (256-foot) all-aluminum, full custom motoryacht Venus" at its yard in Aalsmeer, just south of Amsterdam, two days earlier.

Starck said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press that he is "proud of Venus as he feels it reflects Steve Jobs expectation and vision."

The superyacht has a long white hull with a row of circular portholes just above the water line and two glass-walled cabins on the top deck, one on top of the other.

Starck said Jobs asked him to design a boat in 2007 and approved his design at only their second meeting to discuss the project.

"The project never changed during the process of five years dedicated to a rigorous work on details, driven by the famous eye and genius of Steve Jobs," the statement issued by Starck's design house said. "This work was directly done between Steve Jobs and Philippe Starck."

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Walter Isaacson described plans and models of the yacht in his biography of Jobs, who died, aged 56, on Oct. 5 last year.

"As expected, the planned yacht was sleek and minimalist. The teak decks were perfectly flat and unblemished by any accoutrements. Like an Apple store, the cabin windows were large panes, almost floor to ceiling, and the main living area was designed to have walls of glass that were 40 feet long and 10 feet high,"Jobs' biographer wrote. "He had gotten the chief engineer of the Apple stores to design a special glass that was able to provide structural support."

Isaacson wrote that Jobs, who long battled pancreatic cancer, was conscious of the fact that he may never see the finished yacht, but wanted it completed anyway.

"I know that it's possible I will die and leave Laurene with a half built boat," he said, referring to his wife. "But I have to keep going on it. If I don't, it's an admission that I'm about to die."

[ToolMangler1]

Just like most Apple products, it is designed to be used by somebody with a lot of money and little sense...

[hypnotoad72]

You mean, Steve didn't do it alone? :)

Still, given that man leeched off of college campus, railed on everyone at every turn, knew of product defects then brazenly blamed the customers, and all of those incidents and scores of others can be found quickly in web searches, I couldn't care either way about his big boat.

He probably took it from Xerox before they had a chance to patent it. Just like the GUI... (but the boat is now patented, so if Google wants to innovate on the design, Apple will sue and win because Xerox never bothered to play the "mine mine mine!" patent trolling game... pity... then we'd all be mad at Xerox instead of Apple...)

[nancy_naive]

Wow! The rich REALLY do have it better than those of us who work for them.
Jobs died quietly in a morphine-induced coma, whereas the crew of that monstrosity will died terrifying deaths in a cold dark sea.

[hypnotoad72]

Well, if people demanded living wages and fair treatment, since our labor is what makes any company profitable in the first place...

Oh, wait, that's evil union talk... we should all be wage slaves and be grateful we have even shreds of scraps...

I did not know Jobs was allowed to die so peaceably, unlike so many who've jumped off of buildings or other horrific methods thanks to pressure from external influences outside their control, brought about thanks to people like Jobs...

[rwsmith29456]

That's what Job's wanted, he paid for it. It could look like a toilet bowl and it wouldn't bother me.

[hypnotoad72]

And he never got to toot the horn inside of it.

Gotta love priorities - screw over workers and fellow countrymen, just to build a big garish boat he ultimately never got to use...

[IPonUall2]

I bet it can be controlled with an Ipad.

[996Ducati]

Just another example of why the 1% needs to be taxed a whole lot more!

[Stratocaster1]

So your saying he shouldn't have built this yaht? Im sure it took at least 300 - 500 people working on this project and I don't see how taxing him more would persuade him to spend his money and employ all those people. I do think it should have been built in the USA.

[rwsmith29456]

Stratocaster- I think you are right but you also have to add the manufacturers and suppliers of materials and parts to the list of whom this construction benefited. Just reinforcing your point.

[john92021]

I like some of the Feadships and I like some of Starck's work but this is a floating condo and not a boat.

[flyingfarm]

The boat looks top heavy. That could be a problem in rough seas. Were is the helicopter pad? Every rich dude needs a giant yacht and a helicopter.

[Mathion]

That is one butt-ugly boat... It looks somewhat like a cross between an office building that got dropped sideways in the water and a playboy's condo. I'm not entirely sure which direction is the bow.

Is it even SEA-worthy? It looks like it can't handle more than a five foot wave and about as maneuverable as a supertanker.

I suppose it's filled with gadgets like some of the really awful-looking lunch boxes on wheels rolling around on freeways these days, and maybe ugly is the new "pretty". But my nautical sensibilities have been seriously offended by that monstrosity. If it was a horse, I'd put it down just to spare others the pain of looking at it.

While there is no apparent evidence for it, one wonders whether Mr. Jobs was completely in mental control toward the end of his life. Cancer is painful, after all. Maybe he was over-medicated to control that pain. But after looking at that nautical abortion (and I went elsewhere to get better photos than the one above), one has to wonder what his state of mind was when he designed that (or whether it was actually as he designed it in the first place).

But what is NOT mentioned in the story is that it was co-designed with Philippe Starck - a man who is best known for impractical designs. My feeling is that Jobs must have left a lot of the final appearance decisions to him.

I'm no fan of Apple products, and I've bitterly complained about how they emphasize form over function and this epitomizes that example, but it being taken to this extreme seems less like Jobs and more like some idiot who doesn't know what he's doing. Based on the designs Starck has come up with, it seems to be his forte to design things that are utterly impractical. I don't think Jobs would have been amused.

[MoreThanGossip]

All boats are wonderful, ships included.

[nancy_naive]

two words: Motor Sailer

When combined it makes one hell of an ugly boat, e.g., Chysler 22.

[oldjones]

Mr. Jobs has been gone since 2011 and he made some "small" contributions to civilization; making a pile of money in the process. But funny; here's his really ugly boat; and somewhere his Billions are all stacked up and the survivors are divvying up his largess. (Or fighting over these spoils in court!)Guess it's true- You can't take it with you! And regardless of how many "i" devices he and his design teams have dreamed up; this man is no Jonas Salk...

[John61254]

Seriously? What gives you the right to judge Steve Jobs? Easy to pick on the dead: they can't talk back. If you ever read anything about Jobs, you'd know that he always knew "he couldn't take it with him". He was never driven by the desire to make money, but by the desire to create and follow his dreams. Money was a by-product of his genius, and a means to achieve his goals. Why else do you think he worked up to the day of his death? Money meant nothing to him at that point. But his dreams drove him to the end. He knew that he would live on, like all of us do, in what we leave behind. You're right, he's not Jonas Salk: he's Steve Jobs. Two different men, two different passions, two different visions. And be careful before you place one above the other. Who's to say that the things Jobs envisioned and created won't inspire or enable the next "Jonas Sauk" or even greater. The key is, we all have the opportunity to contribute something positive toward the evolution of the organism of man. Let's not waste our time criticizing each other.