The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Steve Jobs' Apple-powered yacht makes belated first trip

T'was on the good ship Venus

  • print
  • alert

A custom yacht designed by Steve Jobs, dubbed Venus, has set sail just a year after the Apple founder's death.

Steve Jobs yacht Venus

The good ship Venus, minus the intended captain

Jobs, French designer Phillipe Starck, and Apple's Jon Ive all collaborated on the ship, which is based on a minimalist design that most fans will recognize. At 70-80 meters in length, Venus is smaller than the water craft of other technology titans such as Microsoft's Paul Allen and Netscape's Jim Clark, but more than enough for a family outing of the kind Jobs envisioned.

"I know that it's possible I will die and leave Laurene with a half-built boat," Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson. "But I have to keep going on it. If I don't, it's an admission that I'm about to die."

Unsurprisingly, Apple technology plays a major role in the craft. The bridge's instrument controls are displayed on seven 27-inch iMac systems, according to images from the Dutch blog One More Thing. Workers on the boat even got given specially engraved iPod nano's once the ship sailed.

iMacs on the Venus bridge

Jobs wanted his own hardware on board

The ship's hull is made entirely from aluminum for lightness, and has a band of floor-to-ceiling windows around the outside, topped off with teak decking. There's a Jacuzzi on the top of the craft and two floors of superstructure above the deck area.

The design suggests this isn't really an ocean-going craft, since those hull windows would be a liability in very rough seas and the doors and windows of the superstructure aren't slanted but run at a 90 degree angle from the deck. This make the ship trickier to steer in high winds and much less resistant to wave damage.

Venus was launched in the presence of Jobs' widow and their children from the boatyard of Dutch shipbuilder Koninklijke De Vries. Once final testing and outfitting is completed, it will be loaded onto a container ship and sent to its final destination, presumably a marina somewhere on the California coast.

Perfect embodiment of everything Apple.

Form over function, style over substance.

74
2

No, it isn't..

Most Apple gear is actually well designed, and the looks reflect the decent engineering inside (except when they screwed up with the iPhone 4 antenna). So it had form that followed function.

This tub has no form, and cannot function. I personally think it's bone ugly, I have seen far better yachts for the money - and those are sea worthy. Epic fail..

All IMHO, of course, but I'd name it "fugly"..

37
1

Let me guess.... This costs 3 times a comparative and possibly superior specified boat and it will be replaced by a slightly longer version with exactly the same innards in 6 months time whereby the old boat jwill be deemed uncool, none of the new key designs for doors will work and you will not be able to refuel the new boat without a special adaptor priced at a reasonable 20% of the cost of the new boat.

Dow it have a little red dot that appears invalidating any warranty if it goes anywhere near water or humidity?

18
1

Re: Perfect embodiment of everything Apple.

Yes, that was my immediate reaction too.

12
0
Anonymous Coward

God that thing is ugly

and not fit for purpose, either.

11
0

More from The Register

Microsoft reveals Xbox One, the console that can read your heartbeat
Upgrades Live service – and no always-on requirement
 breaking news
Review: Sony Xperia SP
The new mid-range marvel? Oh yes.
US boffin builds 32-way Raspberry Pi cluster
Beowulf cluster built for the price of a single PC
Dell's PC-on-a-stick landing in July: report
Wyse up, suckers, could this be a new set-side-stick?
Review: HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook
All roads lead to Chrome?
HTC woes prompts 'leave now' tweet from former staffer
Chief product officer latest to bail from sinking mobe-maker
Euro PC shipments plummet into bottomless pit of DOOOOM
11th quarter of decline, 20pc drop on last year - Gartner
Nintendo throws flaming legal barrel at YouTubing fans
All your walk-through vid revenue are belong to us