When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996, was already head of the company's design team. He was thinking about quitting, in fact, until a company-wide presentation by Steve Jobs convinced him to stay.
At first, Jobs looked to outside star designers for a possible new head of design, but Ive and Jobs soon hit it off and became personal friends. They found that they shared key elements of their design philosophies.
As a result of the newfound camaraderie, Steve Jobs put his faith in the relatively untested designer instead of hiring someone new from the outside. The pair (with the assistance of the entire design staff, of course) would go on to create some of the most famous consumer electronics designs ever made.