Career
He was Apple employee #282, and was hired in February 1979, initially as an Apple II service technician. He also designed the motherboard for Apple"s LaserWriter, and designed a low-cost version of the Apple II that eventually became the Apple IIe, using the same innovative design techniques that he pioneered with the Mac. Burrell was working in Apple"s service department when he helped Bill Atkinson add more memory to an Apple II computer in an innovative fashion.
Bill recommended him to Jef Raskin, who was looking for a hardware engineer to help him with his newly formed Macintosh project
Burrell left the company before releasing Apple"s "Turbo Mac" design platform, which included an internal hard drive and a further simplified chipset. Burrell reportedly suffered from schizophrenia during the 1990s.
Actor Lenny Jacobson portrayed him in the 2013 film, Jobs.