Steve Jobs' Apple yacht freed after family settles the bill Venus, the yacht that Steve Jobs planned but never got to sail in, has been freed by bailiffs after the settlement of an outstanding bill from co-designer Philippe Starck. Steve Jobs yacht Venus The good ship Venus at launch The iconic French designer worked with his friend Jobs on the design of the 70m motor yacht, which …
Agree, very much, but then again it is all about how this yacht was supposed to be used. If it was designed to be used only in some marina or some lake in the US as a cocktail party location it is probably very good. No pictures about the inside so far. But to consider it a yacht for the seven seas is an other question.
Compared to yachts by Paul Allen or Ellison it is, indeed, cheap in every way you want to compare them.
The bridge I find very peculiar, only wipers to clear the windows and the windows are straight and not as they should be, tilted forward, to increase visibility. (I have spent some years at sea).
I wonder what class of certification this thing has passed. And this has nothing to do with Apple or Jobs (at things he was more qualified to do).
"Philippe Starck obviously has something going for him AND he has money in the bank to prove it."
A knack for scamming clueless-tasteless, arrogant, rich idiots out of their money while selling them awful design ideas an art major 8th grader would not submit as homework?
FWIW Berlusconi has a LOT MORE in the bank, heck he was even PM for a looong time for a whole country yet he is still just another ugly little midget with dyed hair, desperately screwing 16-20 years old prostitutes to forgot he's almost 80 years old... money tells you nothing about the person - but this ridiculously awful, ugly piece of crap sold as a yacht tells you a lot about Starck and his 'talent', for sure..
Not only does it look terrible, it's bloody tiny, Paul Allen's little boat (Octopus) looks a hell of a lot better and is twice as big? I mean, if you want a boat to show off your wealth you don't really go for an ugly cheap thing, especially if you're Apple, maybe Job's didn't want to get sued by putting round corners on the boat?
It does look a bit like they took an old axe prow steamer leveled at the gunnels with top stack consisting of a glass box, a giant iPad, a smaller glass box and topped with a giant iPad mini.
I assume the shiny axe edge is to destroy any hapless blow boat that should cross its path but the chrome anchors are totally for show and will never see the bottom of a harbour but some poor soul will be hanging out there polishing before making entry anywhere.
Care to name an OS that has better software which adheres to guidelines and has good usability? Okay, thought not.
OSX Apps are some of the best for usability, they follow Apple's style guide well, so each application has a familiar GUI and not some custom monstrosity.
Windows apps are a free-for-all and Linux apps are built from so many different toolkits there's no way of knowing what sort of crap you'll get. All with different appearance, shortcuts and conventions.
Errrm - I can't think of any Windows apps without good usability and a consistent look and feel - except for ports from the open source / legacy OS world and Java stuff - both which usually look like something out of the 1980s.
Gotta be in the right place, at the right time and have the right connections ya know.
Same as with real designer dresses. Just look at the stuff being worn at the Oscars or Cannes. A significant portion of it (>20% on average) looks like sh*t, does not fit the person who wears it and suffers "wardrobe malfunctions".
Trouble is you haters are rather misunderstanding the purpose of these things. By and large sea transit and so on is not their main raison d'etre and the owners won't do long voyages on them. The majority of them are effectively caravans. It gives the owner the ability the have their own de luxe mansion wherever there is a sea port with, bizarrely, both more status and, if you consider the cost of a mansion in every port, probably less money too. Indeed there are even ships crossed with floating docks that will take on a bunch of yachts and do the Ocean transit with them secured on board. So seaworthiness really is't a prime consideration.
So seaworthiness really is't a prime consideration.
Obviously not here, but seaworthiness used to be one of the prime considerations of a yacht. Also, contemporary American usage tends to convey size and power rather than more traditional nautical ideals. I don't know much about Jobs, but I suspect he did not have much of a nautical background and probably didn't really understand the aesthetic in that field. With all due respect, it is entirely possible that he was actually out of his depth here.
"So seaworthiness really is't a prime consideration."
That's a $150 million piece of flotsam there. Wouldn't it need just all kinds of insurance - like casualty and loss insurance and liability insurance against injury or death of passengers and who knows what other kinds of insurance. I would not be surprised if some kinds of insurance were required by law; either by international treaty, or the laws of particular countries, or lesser jurisdictions within particular countries (although the last can probably be avoiding by not sailing to those jurisdictions.)
Would insurance companies actually insure a boat that was built with "seaworthiness really not a prime consideration"?
Sure, but even gin palaces are better looking than this thing.
And every sea-going vessel, of whatever size, must be, err, sea-going. IE seaworthy. Because you never know what might happen.
Hater? Yes! of Ugliness! It is utterly irrelevant whether it belongs to Jobs, Gates, Shuttleworth or some unknown scrap-plastic magnate. There are boats that are among the most beautiful man-made things on earth, and they don't get less beautiful because of who owns them. This one is horrible.
Doesn't have to be sea worthy. They are designed to be moored so the owners can wear funny hats and drink themselves silly.
If they actually want to cross a real sea, they are carried as deck cargo. You can see these floating marinas all over the world and, upon arrival, the owners fly in.
"If they actually want to cross a real sea, they are carried as deck cargo. "
Not really. The vast majority of mega-yachts get around under their own steam. This is an 80 meter yacht and it should be able to travel by itself rather than rely on a Dock Express.
But I doubt it has the range to do a transatlantic crossing. Nor would I trust those big bits of glass they've "designed" into the hull: Asking for trouble even in the Gulf of Lion.
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Well, it will probably sustain a bit more, its not uncommon for force 3/4 to blow on the coastal area's in The Netherlands. So its probably already had to sustain atleast that.
Still, I wouldnt put a foot aboard that ships, I've seen some unstable ships but this must top it all...
Latterly, Steve Jobs wasn't really into hedonism; I suspect it was mainly for privacy and home cooking anywhere in the world with his family. Not for sailing; it's a landlubbers idea of the perfect yacht.To prove it, it's being taken to the USA as deck cargo.
If he'd wanted to sail it, his friend Larry Ellison would have put him right on the design(er).
"If he'd wanted to sail it, his friend Larry Ellison would have put him right on the design(er)."
Are you kidding? Ellison's yacht is just as much a white, brickish post-industrial horror as this thing. I saw it a few years ago moored in beautiful Stockholm. It nearly ruined the entire city it was so hideous.
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One does not not need to be able to purchase a thing to form an opinion on its aesthetic qualities. One does not necessarily say something is ugly because one has a beef with the people who created it or to whom it belongs. What is irrational, however, is to assume that the only reason someone can have for criticising something is that they couldn't afford it themselves.
Why would anyone have a pain in the bum from looking at this thing? I agree it's likely to cause serious eye-strain, but (in case you hadn't noticed) that's sort-of the other end of the body.
I agree with those who think it's ugly, and that's not jealousy. I wouldn't want a sea-going craft of any kind - landlubber that's me. However, I can really appreciate the lines of some finer craft and will happily pay money to go and see them. I wouldn't want to go and see this thing even if I was paid full expenses to do so.
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Hopefully they are not using crapple maps or the good ship might run aground.
Here's how the conversation would have gone if Steve was alive and sailing:
STEVE: Mr Cook, set a course for Seattle harbor, I need to test these rail guns on MSFT HQ.
COOK: aye aye sir, its only a couple of miles up the coast afaik
6 Hours Later......
STEVE: where are we Tim?
COOK: Umm, let me check my iphone maps just to be safe. This iOS 6 is great you know.
10 minutes later....
STEVE: Well, where are we Tim?
COOK: Bollox we've run aground apparently just off the Mexican coast sir.
**A Loud Bang Sounds and Cook's dead body hits the ocean.**
STEVE: You're fired bitch, someone get google on the phone asap!!!
I for one like the vertical bow, very old school. Would cheerfully own this yacht. It might not be the most seaworthy way to make a boat that big, but until a naval architect states otherwise, it would probably be gracious to assume that it will survive a significant journey (in any case, if I was splashing out 100+ million, that would be my employee/captains problem anyway).
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