Precisely. Perhaps most famously his total failure to foresee the successes of iPad, iPhone and then iPad. Ballmer laughing these devices off rather than seeing the future in them was painful to watch.
Another tangential favorite is when Mossberg asked Ballmer about the, at the time, new fangled "post PC" devices at the All Things Digital interview. Clueless is a very apt description.
Not only did he miss the wave of the future - we all do, sometimes. The problem here is that he missed the wave of the future - twice! (iPhone, then iPad) - while the entire rest of the world rightly recognized them as game-changers.
This guy is completely out of touch with consumer reality.
I'm not sure what kind of logic would cause a CEO to look at throngs of millions of people, lined up to buy the most hyped, most-published consumer electronics device ever produced. Then completely dismiss it altogether.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Maybe leave Ballmer in place for the enterprise products, but they need to give everything consumer-related to Allard and give him carte blanche and the entire MS fortune to do what he wants. There's a man who has a pulse on consumer products. He might be the closest thing to Jony Ive or Steve Jobs that MS has ever seen.
Another tangential favorite is when Mossberg asked Ballmer about the, at the time, new fangled "post PC" devices at the All Things Digital interview. Clueless is a very apt description.