Today on The Profit and Laws Radio Hour

In 1978, Apple had cool new computers, but no operating system and no one on their lean staff who could code one quickly.  They had started publicizing the Apple II, but they couldn’t get to market without an operating system.  Steve Jobs found Shepardson Microsystems and its employee, Paul Laughton, who promised to deliver in under six weeks. This was a bet the company hire. The initial contract was a single page, bare bones. No cash was spent on lawyers or risk management. Jobs and Woz worried about protecting their assets when they had actual assets. In the beginning, they put a premium on speed.  Later, they started lawyering like mad. Compare the difference between the first, one-pager and the 8-page beauty attached – it’s a software development contract signed by Apple in 2012. 

Here is the original contract from 1978.

[ilink url=”http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1632804/Apple%20DEVELOPMENT%20AGREEMENT.docx” style=”download”]Apple Software Development Contract – 2012[/ilink]

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The original Apple contract came from the DigiBarn computer museum. http://www.digibarn.com/. The longer, current Apple coding contract came from http://www.onecle.com/.

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