The Aura has the following features:

–the phone industry’s first round display, with 16 million colors and 300-dpi resolution;

–a stainless-steel frontpiece that takes two weeks to make;

–an “assisted opening” blade mechanism that involves more than 130 ball bearings (” an effect more like opening a luxury car door than accessing a mobile device”) and which is visible through the back of the phone;

–Stereo Bluetooth!

(Motorola’s press materials don’t mention whether it has Internet access or not; if if it has a browser that reformats pages so they’re round, I’m impressed.)

Aura is available exclusively from Motorola. It costs $1995 and will start shipping in December; there’s a “Buy Now” button on the Aura site, but nothing happened when I clicked it.

This watc–er, I mean phone is clearly a big deal for Moto, one that the company must have been working on for a long time. The timing of its release turned out to be unfortunate; a phone that costs two grand would have sounded excessive no matter what, but now it sounds weirdly out of touch with the world we find ourselves in as of mid-October 2008.

(Although it might be a convenient way to convince yourself you’ve saved $2000: Briefly consider buying an Aura, they go for a free phone from your carrier instead.)

I’m not immune to the attractions of luxury watches. Actually, I collect vintage American timepieces and wear a watch that’s fifty years old, with at least as many moving parts as the Aura. (An electric Hamilton Ventura, in case anyone out there cares.) And I admire serious craftsmanship in consumer electronics, like the new MacBooks’ unibody case.)

That said, I don’t understand the Aura. (Or at least most of the things that make it the Aura: The idea of a round display is cool…or at least not inherently absurd.) The tiny moving parts inside a watch are fascinating because they’re doing something that’s essential to life as we know it–telling time–and they’re doing it by a means that has centuries of history behind it. (If someone invented the hand-wound mechanical watch movement today and proposed it as a replacement for cheap, reliable, simple quartz, I kinda suspect that he or she wouldn’t get too far.)

And I think the idea of bragging about the number of parts inside a electronics device is tone-deaf on some fundamental level. Even the cheapest electronic gizmo, of course, is crammed full of far more, far tinier components than Motorola’s phone, in the form of transistors. But the whole point of digital technology is that you don’t need to worry about complexity. Or, for that matter, to pay for it. It’s just there, silently making your life a little better.

Also: If you’re contemplating splurging on a good mechanical watch, you can tell yourself you’ll hand it down to generations yet unborn, and it’ll become a treasured heirloom. (And it might: I also own and proudly wear a watch that my grandfather bought more than sixty years ago.) You’re not going to hand down the Aura to anyone. In fact, you’ll probably be fortunate if the cell networks in place a decade from now support it.

But maybe you’d like to convince me that this phone makes sense?

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So it’s time to compare Apples and oranges Windows computers again. Let’s begin with a standard Mini-FAQ on the research effort that follows…

Q. The new MacBook has a 13-inch screen, 2GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. You can find Windows laptops with more of everything and features no Mac has, like memory-card slots, for half that price. How can you even pretend that it’s not painfully obvious that Macs are incredibly expensive?

A. It’s completely true that you can buy some amazingly well-equipped Windows notebooks for much, much less than the cheapest MacBook. But the goal of this comparison is to see how the new MacBook stacks up against Windows systems that are roughly comparable, and to see if there’s some sort of unique “Mac Tax” that simply doesn’t exist in the Windows world. Those Windows cheapies are simply a different class of computer–just as a Monster Thickburger isn’t necessarily a better sandwich than one that involves less beef for more money.

Q. How did you decide which computers to compare the MacBook to?

A. I looked for ones with 13-inch screens and Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs, and I priced them in build-to-order configurations sold directly by the manufacturers so I could customize them to match the MacBook when possible. My goal was to make the machines as close as possible in terms of specs. I didn’t attempt to include every machine in this class–these comparisons get unwieldy when they involve too many systems.

Q. You should be giving the Mac huge brownie points for OS X, the lack of junkware, and/or the fact that Mac users don’t need to futz around with security software. Or maybe you should dock the Mac for all the things it doesn’t do, such as run most games (unless you install Windows and thereby turn it into a PC).

A. The differences between OS X and Windows are far more significant than any spec I discuss in this article. But I’m trying to focus mostly on speeds and feeds here–things that can be compared in an objective fashion. I cheerfully acknowledge that that’s only part of the equation, but when people talk about Macs being pricey, they’re comparing hardware, not software environments or user experiences.

Q. You can’t come to overall conclusions about the Mac Tax based on comparing one particular Mac system to a handful of Windows ones. Can you?

A. No, you can’t. And so I’ll do additional stories in this series from time to time. For now, I’m just considering this new MacBook and some roughly similar Windows laptops.

Q. You’re going to force me to click through three pages to learn your conclusions, huh?

A. No, no, I’ll give you an executive summary here. The MacBook is close in price to the laptops I looked at which it resembles most closely, all of which target what I think of as the low end of the high end of the notebook market; if there’s a Mac Tax here, it’s not worth worrying about. That said, it’s possible to get a somewhat more utilitarian 13-inch notebook–one that’s better-equipped than the MacBook in some respects, even–for a lot less.

Enough questions and answers–click to the next page, and we’ll meet the laptops in this comparison…

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That doesn’t mean I’m not curious, though, or that there aren’t things I’d like to see announced. So in lieu of a list of predictions, here’s a wish list, in rough order of its chances of actually being announced tomorrow (that doesn’t count as a prediction, does it?).

Large-capacity iPods with the touch interface. When Apple released an model called the iPod Classic last year, it was clearly signalling that the days of the iPod in something close to its original form were numbered. (Yes, the company once made a computer called the Mac Classic II, but I tend to doubt there will be an iPod Classic II.) Two assumptions seem safe: Someday all iPods except the smallest and cheapest ones will have iPhone-like touch interfaces, and someday all iPods will use solid-state memory, not hard drives. It’s too early for Apple to offer an affordable 64GB or 128GB solid-state iPod Touch, so there’s room in the lineup for a hard-drive based model with a touch interface, plus Wi-Fi and support for apps.

A tethering plan for iPhones. I guess this is more of an AT&T thing than an Apple thing, but rumor has it that you’ll be able to use your iPhone as a wireless modem for a laptop. I hope rumor proves true.

Some sort of subscription plan for iTunes music. There are rumors of flat-rate all-you-can eat music for the iPod, but they don’t ring that true to me, and some of them sound like they’re associated with the purchase of a new iPod, which might mean you couldn’t apply ‘em to the iPod you already own.

An announcement about more iTunes Plus DRM-free music. At the moment, Amazon.com and other purveyors of MP3s have a significantly better selection of DRM-free tunes than iTunes does, apparently because of the unwillingness of some major labels to do deals with Apple. I’d love to see Apple get the deals it needs to catch up.

A MacBook Air with a 160GB hard drive. I have no plans to buy a MacBook Air anytime soon, but I might someday…and not until the drives get roomier.

Macs with Blu-Ray. Actually, I have no plans to buy any Mac immediately, but I’d like the next one I get to have Blu-Ray. I’m just thinking ahead…

Some Macs that are cheaper and/or beefier in terms of CPU, hard drive, and RAM for the same price. Simply because it’s time, and so that every Mac looks competitive compared to comparable PCs.

An iPhone/MobileMe update that provides a to-do list on the iPhone with synching with iCal’s to-do’s. I think this’ll happen eventually, but I can’t say I’m optimistic that it’s that high on Apple’s own to-do list.

An iPhone update that lets you rotate the phone into landscape mode for e-mail. One of the more glaring issues with the iPhone as it stands, and you’d think a relatively easy one to fix.

A new version of the nifty Remote software for iPhones that doesn’t just let you control iTunes, but stream music from it to the iPhone. Letting you listen to anything in your music library on your iPhone, thus breaking the 16GB limit. I’m guessing that local streaming via Wi-Fi will happen at some point, though it would be fabulous if you could do it across the Internet.

An iPhone/MobileMe update that provides a to-do list on the iPhone with synching with iCal’s to-do’s. I think this’ll happen eventually, but I can’t say I’m optimistic that it’s that high on Apple’s own to-do list.

An Apple TV that records TV. I don’t see this happening now or probably ever, since Apple would have to wade into the murky waters of CableCard support to do it right. But if there were an Apple TV that was also a TiVo-style DVR, I’d snap it up.

Here’s one thing I hope Apple doesn’t release tomorrow:

A major, game-changing upgrade to the MacBook Pro line. I bought a 15-inch MacBook Pro just a few months ago, and I’ll be bummed if if’s rendered obsolete tomorrow. Hey, I said this was an intensely selfish list….

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