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It appears that Steve Ballmer's prediliction towards competitive jabs at Apple and others is contagious, and not in a good way. Earlier this week, Kevin Turner, while speaking at a developer conference, announced that "It looks like iPhone 4 might be [Apple's] Vista, and I'm okay with that." A look at the numbers below will show why this gaffe should win him the "2010 Dumb Senior Executive Comment" award.

At least Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, thunders away in developer and press conferences spewing seemingly outrageous comments to both motivate his troops and bully the competition. Here are some less than stellar predictions Steve has made:

1. “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” (USA Today, April 2007)

2. “Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards.” (Court transcript, November 2004)

Clearly, the comment made by Kevin was of a different ilk than Steve's. Vista still maintains a healthy 20% (some say 15%, others 25%, so I averaged) market share of computer operating systems. Why would you want to admit so readily a product failure of many years in the making that users, by the hundreds of millions, are still using today. At least wait a few years after all your users have transitioned to Windows 7 or the next generation of Microsoft's operating system to trash the product.
What's even dumber is that the iPhone 4 is Apple's most successful product to date. Kevin managed to make Microsoft look like an ass while trying to knock Steve Jobs, who looked like a saint when he announced Apple was giving away free cases to anyone who purchased an iPhone 4. Jobs also reminded his audience that if a user was not 100% satisfied, a quick trip to the genius bar at Apple or At&t stores would remedy the situation by getting a full refund.