Although Steve Jobs is not known for ostentatious displays of his wealth, he was designing his own luxury yacht. And typical of Jobs, he was designing it himself so that he could obsess over every detail.
According to a snippet in the New York Times from Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Jobs, due out Monday:
The book also offers some tidbits about Mr. Jobs’s legendary attention to detail, which, according to Mr. Isaacson, extended to a luxury yacht that he began designing in 2009. The design is sleek and minimalist, with 40-foot-long glass walls. It is being built in the Netherlands by the custom yacht firm Feadship, the book says.
Here is Feadship’s website and below are some of the boats. Many of them look too ugly for Jobs, especially the Predator.
The Predator:
Another Predator:
This is a concept design unveiled at the Monaco Boat Show in 2009. It’s pretty minimalist. Perhaps this is what caught Jobs’ eye?
Another of Feadship’s concept designs,the X Stream, previewed at the 2010 Monaco Boat Show.
One of Feadship’s more conventional designs.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
21 responses to “Steve Jobs Was Designing His Own Super Yacht”
THANKS CULT OF MAC. I CAN FUCKING CANCEL MY PREORDER OF THE BIOGRAPHY BECAUSE YOU SAUCY FUCKS POST EVER FUCKING SINGLE TIDBIT FROM THE BOOK YOU CAN GET YOUR GRUBBY FUCKING PAWS ON.
very mature
stop shouting and behave yourself
the second to the last seems to have the right ingredients, nice :)
Dang, I wanna know what he said. It got “8 likes” whatever it was!
just using the f-word in caps a lot
I work at feadship
I think a sailboat would be better than any of these buckets of bolts.
Larry always wanted to have the biggest yacht in the world, see: http://gadgets.fosfor.se/risin… . That’s the motivation behind “Larry Ellison”‘s outburst, whatever was actually in it.
I doubt Steve would build the biggest, I think he would build the best designed. None of the prototypes shown in this thread would match his style that well. I strongly suspect whatever he designed will be completely custom.
I would have thought he’d like a high speed yacht like Octopussy, but he probably didn’t like the environmental implications. Despite those draft designs, Feadship has a reputation for being a bit conservative.
Since it’s under construction hopefully it will be finished, and his wife and children will enjoy it.
D
I think there are better fits for jobs. He should have used a sailboat design like the Maltese falcoln.
iYacht…
There is a picture of what looks like it good very well be his yacht here: http://www.panoramio.com/photo…
This company actually makes a good fit fir him. I’m sure he picked Feadship because of their proven conventional works and top notch service to global clients over decades, relational to Mac Pro. Then he would of added his own touch in design and materials now able to withstand design attributes he may be envisioning not customary for the seapreviously.