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The Almighty Buck Transportation Apple

Steve Jobs' Yacht Impounded In Amsterdam 221

SchrodingerZ writes "The Venus, Steve Jobs' custom-made mega yacht, (valued at 137.5 million dollars), has been impounded in Amsterdam. Philippe Starck, the boat's main designer, had The Venus impounded by debt collectors, after supposedly Starck and his company, Ubik, were paid only 6 million of the 9-million-euro commission. Roelant Klaassen, a lawyer for Ubik, released in a statement that 'These guys [Jobs and Starck] trusted each other, so there wasn't a very detailed contract.' 'The Venus is a floating ode to both Jobs and Starck's minimalist aesthetic. Made entirely out of aluminum, with 40-foot-long floor-to-ceiling windows lining the passenger compartment and seven 27-inch iMacs making up the command center.' The ship was unofficially unveiled in late October, a year after Jobs' death. It now sits dormant in the Port of Amsterdam, until the payment dispute is resolved."
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Steve Jobs' Yacht Impounded In Amsterdam

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  • "Valued"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24, 2012 @03:28AM (#42379927)

    "Valued at 137.5 M$"?

    Ahem...

    I gather that's what Jobs paid for it, but if his heirs were to put that ugly-ass, unseaworthy monstrosity up for sale, something tells me it would fetch a lot less.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      ...something tells me it would fetch a lot less.

      How much does a pound of aluminum get you at the recycling center these days?

    • It's actually a nice boat. I wouldn't mind sailing on it.
      • by gfody ( 514448 ) on Monday December 24, 2012 @03:52AM (#42379999)
        Look at this: http://www.onemorething.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Schermafbeelding-2012-10-27-om-13.57.16.png [onemorething.nl] Jobs would've dropped dead at the site of the imac cables coming out of those ikea cabinets and duct taped to the floor.
      • The problem is that the design is a river barge. It is not an ocean going yacht. That makes it even more of a niche item.
    • by bkmoore ( 1910118 ) on Monday December 24, 2012 @03:49AM (#42379995)

      "Valued at 137.5 M$"?....something tells me it would fetch a lot less.

      Yes, but it was machined from a single block of Aluminum.

    • by DrXym ( 126579 )
      The heirs should count themselves lucky. If the Apple logo had been fixed in place the boat would have been valued at 250 million.
    • I think the ugly design would be outdone by the fact that you can't run any useful navigation software on those 27" iMacs. I'm not actually sure what they're doing in the "command center." Is it for the captain to play Starcraft II?
    • It sounds like you are jealous that you don't have a custom built yacht of your own.

      Yes these are toys for the 0.1%.

  • Strange (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nerdfest ( 867930 ) on Monday December 24, 2012 @03:28AM (#42379931)

    Someone trusted Steve Jobs? Obviously they didn't know him that well.

  • Well, it's not like he will be needing it any time soon.
  • It might something something me. Ah hell I lost it.
  • by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Monday December 24, 2012 @03:41AM (#42379975) Journal

    Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Steve Jobs was a nasty mean spirited jerk who always cheated everyone whenever he could. Even close friends. In fact, he has no close friends, just victims who like battered wives thought that THIS time he would change. It is quite sad really that the guy himself that he could never get over his past. Shows you that money doesn't really make people happy.

    You got to wonder what made him this way, so obsessed about money and power that he would screw supposed friends over and not even see it as wrong. And continue to do that when any new money would just be a number on a bank account. Compared to Jobs, people like Gates, Branson and Buffet seem a lot happier. Not nicer perhaps in their past but at least with age they learned not to be total assholes all the time. It is not like Jobs did not do any charity but more people will remember him as a prick then as a benefactor. Despite the fact that those friends he did screw over ultimately didn't exactly walk away empty handed.

    My epitaph will probably read something like "who?" but it is better then "well, he did give us the iPod but he was such a dick". It not even as if he will be remembered as all that evil. It is just the paranoid always looking out for number 1 that people finally were able to vent after he died.

    The guy who made an American company actually produce cool gadgets is more remembered for even in death trying to cheat "friends" and all that over a boat whose ugliness shows that whatever Steve Jobs had for talent, an eye for design was not one of them.

    And now for the final insult: This post written on a Samsung Android Phone.

    Cry havoc and release the Apple fans!

    • by dbIII ( 701233 )

      Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it

      Edison!

      • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        By some accounts, Edison was semi-mellow, but investors pressured him to be ruthless after alternating current started hurting their business.

    • Oddly enough Wozniak seems to be the polar opposite.

      • by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Monday December 24, 2012 @05:09AM (#42380211) Journal

        Nice guy, clever and rich... a bit dim perhaps in choosing his friends or at least in doing business with friends (although staying friends even if friends are not perfect is what good guys do). But nice, clever and rich foremost. Neither Jobs or Wozniak ever needed to worry about where their next meal would come from for a long time. So... who would you want to be? The super rich billionaire Jobs or the quite comfortable millionaire Wozniak?

    • by drkim ( 1559875 )

      My epitaph will probably read something like "who?" but it is better then "well, he did give us the iPod but he was such a dick".

      Someday his entire listing in the history books will read something like, "Worked briefly with the great Steve Wozniak. See: Wozniak, Steve."

  • by Ol Biscuitbarrel ( 1859702 ) on Monday December 24, 2012 @03:54AM (#42380011)

    We wanted to give you a shave like no other you ever had. We said, It's about time a man's face got a little loving. We said, With Ubik's self-winding Swiss chromium never-ending blade, the days of scrape-scrape are over. So try Ubik. And be loved. Warning: use only as directed. And with caution.
    ----------------------
    AMAZING OPPORTUNITY FOR ADVANCEMENT

    TO ALL WHO CAN QUALIFY!

    Mr. Glen Runciter of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium of Zürich, Switzerland, doubled his income within a week of receiving our free shoe kit with detailed information as to how you also can sell our authentic simulated-leather loafers to friends, relatives, business associates.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    That is the ugliest piece of shit I have ever seen. Its not a boat, its an accident at the aluminum smelter. Not to worry though: you can put it out of its misery by melting it down and turning it into about 500 million Android phones (you could sell the lot for the cost of about 20 iPhones(tm)), and Android would go from 75% market share to 95% market share. Just think about how many iPhones you would have to sell to buy one of these: about 20 iPad owners collectively could have bought it though.

  • by WWJohnBrowningDo ( 2792397 ) on Monday December 24, 2012 @04:41AM (#42380135)

    It now sits dormant in the Port of Amsterdam

    And here I thought it would require a proprietary port.

  • by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Monday December 24, 2012 @06:06AM (#42380359)
    I'm sure it's decked out with all sorts of cool innovations but god does it look ugly. I can't put my finger on the wrongness except to say the boat looks like the bastard offspring of some 7 year old's first experiments designing a boat with only straight lines and a 1970's prefab building.
    • Apple is just lucky that Steve Jobs never tried to peddle iBoats. Maybe somebody already had the patent on rounded boat corners?

  • by VortexCortex ( 1117377 ) <VortexCortex AT ... trograde DOT com> on Monday December 24, 2012 @06:06AM (#42380361)

    paid only 6 million of the 9-million

    Clearly, they were holding it wrong.

    • Or the rest was in Itunes store credit but that was hidden in tiny print in an illogical category in the terms of the contract.
  • I heard that Memphis Methodist University Hospital wants their liver back too.

  • about pages like this, is that the jokes are all so ORIGINAL!

    • I know, right? If only we had a beowulf cluster of them. And maybe micro$oft could be involved somehow...
    • I'm surprised the jokes about the boat actually made their way here since clearly, they're using Apple Maps to navigate.
  • I am really stunned to see Steve Jobs choosing 40 foot tall Windows for his yacht.
  • Nice one-side post, err, I mean press release. According to the other side, the agreement was for a 6% commission, with the initial budget for construction at $150 million, but actual construction cost turned out to be $105 million.

    • WTF is Starck doing taking a 6% commission? Starchitects take 15%-20%. Perhaps Starck was taking 20% of the interiors budget, with the shipwrights taking 10%-15% on the hull/mechanicals design.

      • He already makes plenty of money on his Iron Man suits and associated technology so this was just a low income side project he did for fun.
  • This news is at least a week old, and I actually read today that the yacht was released again.
  • by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Monday December 24, 2012 @02:17PM (#42382651)

    In Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs, the late Apple CEO is quoted as saying that, "I know that it's possible I will die and leave Laurene with a half-built boat, but I have to keep going on. If I don't, it's an admission that I'm about to die."

    Translation: I know I'll never pay this guy for all his work, as I'm about to die. If I can't royally screw someone over one last time, I just won't be able to live with myself.

    I don't know which is sadder: that Steve Jobs was this shallow, hollow person who valued money more than people, or that it says volumes about our country that so many people worshipped him.

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel

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