Steve Jobs' superyacht unveiled in Holland

Just over a year after the Apple founder died, the luxury motor yacht he commissioned and helped French product designer Philippe Starck make has finally slipped into an anonymous Dutch backwater.

Looking like a floating Apple store, it bears all the hallmarks of a new Jobs-inspired creation - crisp white lines, polished metal, glass. And secrecy.

Late Tuesday, shipbuilder Feadship announced it had launched the 78.2-meter all-aluminium, full custom motoryacht Venus at its yard in Aalsmeer, just south of Amsterdam.

Starck said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press that he is proud of Venus as he feels it reflects Steve Jobs' expectation and vision.

The superyacht has a long white hull with a row of circular portholes just above the water line and two glass-walled cabins on the top deck, one on top of the other.

Starck said Jobs asked him to design a boat in 2007 and approved his design at only their second meeting to discuss the project.

Walter Isaacson described plans and models of the yacht in his biography of Jobs, who died at the age of 56 on October 5 last year.

"As expected, the planned yacht was sleek and minimalist. The teak decks were perfectly flat and unblemished by any accoutrements. Like an Apple store, the cabin windows were large panes, almost floor to ceiling, and the main living area was designed to have walls of glass that were 40 feet long and 10 feet high," Jobs' biographer wrote. "He had gotten the chief engineer of the Apple stores to design a special glass that was able to provide structural support."

Isaacson wrote that Jobs, who long battled pancreatic cancer, was conscious of the fact that he may never see the finished yacht, but wanted it completed anyway.