I actually think Microsoft is often ahead of it's time with it's consumer-facing products, but executes very poorly. So they have good foresight, but "very bad taste" when it comes to execution.

Microsoft was early to making tablets, smartphones, living room PCs, etc. They just royally screw up the execution of each product category every time.

Maybe it'd be a fun idea for to take some of Microsoft's failed consumer ideas, and revisit them 10-15 years later to see if some other company successfully executes on it.