Apple’s Lion pushes users further into corner

Mountain Lion, the latest Mac operating system, introduces more than 200 new features but seems to have only one overarching goal: Binding your computer ever more firmly to your iPhone and iPad, while binding you ever more firmly to Apple.

Compared to the previous version of Apple’s OS X software, Lion — which overhauled everything from how programs are launched to how you scroll through a web page — Mountain Lion is an incremental improvement, bringing to the Mac several functions already familiar to users of the company’s mobile devices.

I’ve been running the new software for a week, both on a laptop borrowed from the company and on an iMac desktop where I installed it myself. The upgrade, which is available only as a download from the Mac App Store, costs €15.99.