Michael "Scotty" Scott is an American entrepreneur, who was the first CEO of Apple Computer from February 1977 to March 1981. Formerly director of manufacturing at National Semiconductor, Scott was persuaded by Mike Markkula to take the CEO position at Apple, as the co-founders ? Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak ? were both seen as insufficiently experienced for the job at the time. Attempting to set an example for all businesses, in 1979 Scott declared there would be no typewriters at Apple. In 1979 and 1980, Jef Raskin's Macintosh project was a four-person research effort. It wasn't considered important within Apple, and was almost canceled a couple of times. When Apple had another major reorganization in the fall of 1980, it was terminated again, but Jef pleaded with Scott and Markkula for more time, and was granted three more months to show that he was really onto something. On February 25, 1981, the day known as "Black Wednesday" at the company, Scott personally fired forty Apple employees, including half of the Apple II team, in a belief that they were redundant. 

February 11th, 1945 in (Age 79)