Apple announces new .Mac features:

.Mac, Apple’s suite of innovative software and Internet services, has just been enhanced. .Mac membership unlocks exclusive Tiger features including Mac-to-Mac syncing of keychains and Mail settings like accounts, rules, signatures and Spotlight-driven Smart Mailboxes.

So, if I get this right, to obtain the privilege of syncing two Macs, with a program that’s included in OS X, you have to pay the .Mac subscription, that’s roughly the price of the OS itself, even though said synching doesn’t (presumably) use the mac.com resources in any way?

This is exactly the kind of announcement that makes me have second thoughts about switching.

(Yeah, I know, rsync and all. Irrelevant. Or, actually, not: you have to pay extra in order to use a program that’s included with OS X, and does the same thing, only graphically, as another program that’s also included in the OS. That’s even better.)