Unveiled: Steve Jobs’ Luxury Yacht, Designed with Phillipe Starck

The Apple founder's yacht was finally unveiled a year after Steve Jobs' death

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Apple founder Steve Jobs was the master of the less-is-more aesthetic. His recently unveiled luxury yacht shows that his design vision extended far beyond iPhones, iPads and laptops.

The yacht, which was unveiled this week in the Dutch port of Aalsmeer, is the product of a collaboration between Jobs and French designer Philippe Starck. In the words of The Guardian, the sleek, 260-foot aluminum vessel, named Venus, “looks like a floating stack of Apple products.”

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Biographer Walter Isaacson wrote that Jobs, who long battled pancreatic cancer, was aware of the fact that he might not see the finished yacht. He quotes the Apple CEO as saying, “I know that it’s possible I will die and leave Laurene [Jobs’ wife] with a half-built boat, but I have to keep going on it. If I don’t, it’s an admission that I’m about to die.”

Starck said Jobs asked him to design a boat in 2007 and approved his design at their second meeting. “Steve and I shared the same idea about the elegance of the minimal, the elegance of work well done,” Starck told the BBC.  “It is not like a lot of mega yachts showing the vulgarity of money,” he said. “It’s a boat showing the elegance of intelligence.”

According to Starck, Jobs was very pleased with the result of the work. “He said, ‘My God, it’s better than I could have dreamt’.” Unfortunately, Jobs died of pancreatic cancer at at age 56 on Oct. 5, 2011, and was unable to see the finished product or captain the ship of his dreams.

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