Although Jony Ive is now a key component in the gearing of the Apple company, at the time when Steve Jobs resumed his leadership position in Cupertino, the current senior vice president of the design division was on the verge of being fired. When he returned to Apple, Steve Jobs brought a good part of the former employees of NeXT, a company founded by him and bought by Apple, to develop various projects in the new parent company.
Among them was to be Hartmut Esslinger, the creator of a programming language for the Macs of the 80s, but also of the most important NeXT product, he was going to take over the role of Jony Ive and lead the design division of the Apple company. Esslinger did not want to return to Apple, so Jobs thought to hire him on Richard Sapper, the creator of IBM's ThinkPad design, but he refused to join a very, very small company, so Jobs stayed with the people Apple already had.
In the first meeting between Jobs and Ive, the latter had a letter of resignation on him that he intended to present to the CEO of Apple, he started the discussion with a serious criticism of the way in which the design of Apple products was thought in previous years. With no alternatives for the design division, Jobs ultimately kept Ive in the position, even supported his projects and became one of his best friends, helping him become one of Apple's most important people .
