Apple moved to the Infinite Loop campus in 1993 from its previous headquarters on Bandley Drive, also in Cupertino. The six buildings, numbered IL1 through IL6, were arranged around a central courtyard in a loop configuration that gave the address its name. Steve Jobs, who had been ousted from Apple in 1985 and would not return until 1997, had no involvement in the campus's design. When he came back, he found a perfectly adequate corporate campus that happened to be the stage for the greatest product development streak in technology history: the iMac, iPod, iTunes Store, iPhone, and iPad were all conceived and developed within these walls.

For Apple fans, the Infinite Loop campus held a unique attraction: the Apple Company Store at IL1, the only physical retail location where Apple-branded merchandise -- t-shirts, mugs, bags with the Apple logo -- could be purchased. While Apple's retail stores sold products, only the Company Store sold the brand itself. Tourists and tech pilgrims visited from around the world, posing for photos at the 1 Infinite Loop sign and browsing the store for souvenirs. The campus represented a rare point of physical access to a company that otherwise communicated through meticulously controlled product launches and press events.

In 2017, Apple moved its headquarters to Apple Park, the massive ring-shaped campus designed by Norman Foster on the site of the former HP campus a mile away. Apple Park, with its spaceship silhouette, became the new symbol of Apple's ambitions. But Infinite Loop was not abandoned. Apple continues to use the campus for offices and operations, though the Company Store permanently closed in January 2024 after more than three decades. The original headquarters has aged into something like a historic site -- the place where the smartphone revolution was born, the address that appeared on billions of product boxes, the campus that proved you do not need an extraordinary building to produce extraordinary things.