Biography | Tim Cook — The Loop Where the Board Named Him Chief Executive

People treat the handover as a story that happened at Apple Park.

Apple Park did not exist yet.

On 24 August 2011 Steve Jobs resigned as chief executive. The board named Timothy D. Cook, then chief operating officer, as CEO the same day and elected Jobs chairman.

The company's principal office on the filings was 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino.

Six buildings sit around a private U-shaped street named for a programming loop. Jobs had made this 1993 campus the headquarters after he returned in 1997.

Cook had arrived here in March 1998 as senior vice president of worldwide operations, leaving Compaq after six months in Houston.

He was thirty-seven. Apple was still listing losses. His first morning he had to cross a picket line of Newton employees after Jobs killed that product.

He had already run the company as interim chief executive during Jobs's medical leaves in 2009 and again in January 2011.

The 24 August vote made the title permanent. Cook joined the board that day.

Jobs died on 5 October 2011. Cook had the flags on this campus flown at half-staff.

The address stayed the headquarters until Apple Park opened in 2017. The loop is still Apple offices and laboratories.

Do not look for the 2011 board action in the ring west of Interstate 280. That campus came later.

Cook held the chief-executive title until 1 September 2026, when he became executive chairman and John Ternus became CEO.

This pin is the older street, and the date the title first changed hands.

Photo: Apple Headquarters in Cupertino, Joe Ravi, 4 September 2011, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Portrait: Tim Cook at WWDC 2012, Mike Deerkoski, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.