Burrell Smith

Burrell Carver Smith (born December 16, 1955) was a member of the original Macintosh design team at Apple Computer.

Work at Apple
Smith was hired in February 1979 as Apple employee #282 and first worked as an Apple II service technician. While working in the service department, Smith helped Bill Atkinson add more memory to his Apple II computer than was thought to be possible for use in the development of the Apple Lisa. Atkinson recommended Smith to Jef Raskin, who was looking for a hardware engineer to help him with his newly formed Macintosh project.

As a member of the design team, Smith designed five different Macintosh prototype motherboards during the course of development. His techniques utilized Programmable Array Logic (PAL) chips to achieve maximum functionality with a minimal chip count. Steve Jobs also became involved in the aesthetics of the board design.

After clashing with engineering manager Bob Belleville, Smith left Apple before completing the "Turbo Mac" design platform, which would have included a 20MB NISHA hard drive with a new file system and a further simplified chipset. The project was completed as the Macintosh Plus and the NISHA drive became available separately as the Hard Disk 20 which was supported by the Hierarchical File System. However, an internal hard drive would not be supported until the Macintosh SE.

Smith later co-founded Radius with Andy Hertzfeld.

Personal life
Smith reportedly suffered from schizophrenia during the 1990s. In 1993, he was accused of breaking windows, throwing a firecracker and leaving letters at the home of Steve Jobs. Actor Lenny Jacobson portrayed him in the 2013 film jOBS.

Smith has since retired and lives in Palo Alto.

Articles

 * Burrell Smith: Macintosh hardware wizard by Dan Farber at CNET (2014-01-22)
 * The Lonesome Tale of Burrell Smith by Tim Knight at the Slope of Hope (2007-07-01)