founder Steve Jobs returning to the company he had once cofounded and then been ousted from. Along with Jobs came NeXT's operating system, NeXTSTEP, which would become the foundation for Apple's next-generation operating system Mac OS X. While Jobs returned to Apple only as an "advisor", Apple's board fired CEO Gil Amelio on July 9, 1997, and Jobs replaced him as interim CEO. Upon his return to Apple, Jobs drastically streamlined the company, returning Apple to profitability by cost-cutting. But the company still needed new hit products. Jobs envisioned winnowing down Apple's confusing and extensive computer offerings to just four products: a laptop and desktop model each for professionals and consumers. What became the iMac would slot into the consumer desktop position. Jobs wanted an inexpensive computer that would prioritize easy internet connectivity. The engineering and design teams had less than a year to deliver a shipping product. Design Apple industrial design director Robert Brunner left Apple in 1996, intending for the 29-year-old Jony Ive to take his place. Ive inherited an award-winning design team within an Apple marred by financial dysfunction. Dispirited with Apple's leadership, Ive was soon also thinking of leaving the company. At the meeting announcing Jobs' new role as CEO, Jobs addressed the assembled staff and insisted Apple's problems were its poor products. Ive was struck by Jobs' focus on making industrial design a core part of Apple's comeback strategy. Ive and Jobs quickly developed a rapport, and Jobs decided to keep Apple's industrial design team under Ive intact amid wider reorganizations and cuts. Initially, Jobs intended for the new consumer desktop to be a "network computer"—a cheap, low-powered terminal without disk drives that used the internet to connect to remote servers. Ive's team was given Jobs' specifications for the new product in September 1997: it should be a distinctive all-in-one computer with a selling price of around US$1,200, much lower than the $2,000 ($ adjusted for inflation) Apple was charging for their entry-level models. The design team tried to decide who the audience for the computer would be, and what sorts of objects conveyed the emotions they wanted the new product to instill. They developed sketches collaboratively, with designer Doug Satzger coming up with an egg-shaped drawing based on his previous work on Thomson Consumer Electronics televisions. Ive and the rest of the team decided to make the egg shape the main design focus, even