Looks like the push to retain and enlist .Mac members continues apace. Recently we noted Apple's kind offer to bribe existing .Mac subscribers by knocking twenty bucks off their renewal fee for every rube they managed to sign up; not long after, we also pointed out Apple giving away free games and gift certificates to renewing members, plus the extension of the "Every Mac Needs .Mac" discount promo. Well, here's another little enticement to throw on the pile: Apple has just introduced .Mac Bookmarks, a means by which your Safari bookmarks stay synchronized via iSync and remain accessible from anywhere on the 'net.

Information on the new service looks pretty scarce, even to actual .Mac members at this point, but the gist appears to be that once you've used iSync to upload your bookmarks to .Mac, you'll be able to log in to your .Mac account from any browser anywhere with a 'net connection and pop up a little surfer window containing said bookmarks. It's a deliriously simple idea, and a happy one; whether or not having access to all your bookmarks all the time makes that $99 a year look just a little bit less expensive, well, that's up to you. Personally, we consider it a nice bonus; we'll give it a whirl when we get a couple of contiguous spare seconds to rub together.

In addition, according to MacMinute, Apple has also trotted out its time-honored "free games for subscribers" move; this time it's six solitaire games from GameHouse: Klondike, Golf, Addiction, Pyramid, Turbo, and Crescent, which apparently represent 60% of GameHouse's $19.95 Solitaire Vol. 1 pack. So that's another $11.97 of value for your $99 annual fee. Sure, it's no Burning Monkey Solitaire, but it beats watching your fingernails grow. (We assume. We haven't downloaded the GameHouse stuff yet, but we have watched our fingernails grow, and the plot is thin and the character development is practically nonexistent.)

We're the first to admit that Apple's .Mac member specials aren't terribly compelling stuff and are in no way a reason to join, but we have to admit, they're a nice bonus. We get a lot of mileage out of our free .Mac copy of Alchemy Deluxe, and our hundred free iPhoto prints alone just about paid for our first year's membership. Still, if all these little bonuses still can't bring .Mac subscriptions up to its target levels, Apple's only got one more logical offering to make: iPorn. We'll be checking our iDisk regularly just in case.