Telstra Tells Apple To "Stick To Your Knitting"

As well as teaching me a new colorful Australian expression I hadn't previously encountered (note: I'm an Australian living in the USA, perhaps knitting has taken on greater cultural significance in the five years I've been living in the US) this has given me another reason to hate Telstra (known in Australia as "a bunch of wankers|tools|drongos|galahs|English Test Cricket players"), even though I no longer have to deal with them.

Apparently, in business-speak, this phrase is akin to telling a company to "stick to its core competency". Telstra, of course, is a phone carrier ("a mob of greedy bastards"), so its core competency is providing lousy customer service and billing. Among its core competencies, building excellent telephones and/or identifying what is and isn't good technology don't figure.

Anyway, apparently the key thing is that Telstra hasn't been offered the phone and therefore instead of "whinging" they've decided to say the phone is "shit house". Maybe this Telstra fellow was just "coming the raw prawn". Or it's just another publicity stunt (a la the wrangling over the iPhone name -- anyone else got a better way of keeping iPhone in the news for the four month period between product announcement and actual availability?) Will Telstra be forced to back down owing to customer demand and then, sheepishly -- in free headlines -- announce that they will be offering exclusive access to the iPhone -- which they'll suddenly decide is a "little ripper" -- for only the US price x the exchange rate x 2?

"Pig's arse", Telstra.