Austin Techxas

Just because most of Austin has already broken out the eggnog doesn't mean that the tech world has stopped, errr, teching. This week, the Internet was aflutter with news of technology giants duking it out in Austin.

An Apple a Day

This morning Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted an announcement that Mac Pro manufacturing has begun in Austin. Although the tweet was the first official word from the company that Austin would build the Pro, it was hardly a surprise. In October, news broke that Flextronics America was hiring Austin workers to build a new desktop computer. In June, it was confirmed that Flextronics would be the partner for the redesigned Mac Pro. Given such leaks, even Siri would have been able to put two and two together.

Keeping It Normal

Meanwhile, Google released its annual Zeitgeist report on Tuesday, detailing the search engine's top searches for the year. It turns out that Austinites are not as weird as conventional wisdom would have it. Instead of searching for homemade hemp soap or the filmography of Faruza Balk, Austinites were interested in Cory Monteith's death and Black Friday. Very disappointing.

Pole Dancing

Speaking of Google, the information giant is currently in negotiations with AT&T over utility poles for the Google Fiber network. Although most of Austin's poles are owned by the city, 20% are owned by AT&T. Publicly at least, AT&T says that Google has no particular right to attach itself to those poles. The City Council vote to force AT&T to play nice was postponed until January, but the telecom giant hasn't been shy about flexing its muscle. AT&T launched its own fiber service, GigaPower, to Austinites on Dec. 11.