NYT|外刊精读（2）

如今苹果为何让人失望？

Yet, all around Apple, the digital world is burning up. Indirectly, Apple’s devices are implicated in the rise of misinformation and distraction, the erosion of privacy and the breakdown of democracy. None of these grand problems is Apple’s fault, but given its centrality to the business, Apple has the capacity and wherewithal to mitigate them. But instead of rising to the moment by pushing a fundamentally new and safer vision of the future, Apple is shrinking from it.

Consider privacy. Mr. Cook is one of the tech industry’s strongest champions of the sanctity of our private information, and Apple has pushed for more stringent privacy regulations — which is just about the least Apple could do. But what if it thought a little bigger? For example, it could directly take on Google and Facebook — the demons who rule our era of surveillance capitalism — by placing far more stringent restrictions on their culture of rampant invasion, or at least removing them from preferential places in the iPhone. （Google will pay Apple an estimated $12 billion in 2019 to act as the default search engine on the iPhone.）

More than restricting the present, Apple could deploy its billions to build a better digital future. In particular, I wonder why Apple isn’t working feverishly to create new privacy-minded versions of social-media services the world needs.

Take messaging, for starters. There is a strong moral case for Apple to turn iMessage, its encrypted messaging app, into an open standard available to anyone, even Android users, who currently lack many privacy-minded messaging apps that aren’t run by an ad company or aren’t friendly with the Chinese government.

There might be a business case, too. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, recently reoriented his company toward messaging. As Will Oremus noted in Slate, the move brings Facebook into direct competition with Apple. This presents an opportunity for Apple to turn a cold war into a hot one; Apple could swiftly undercut Mr. Zuckerberg’s ambition by freeing iMessage and bringing the gift of privacy to the non-Apple world.

Here are some other big ideas: Apple could embark on a long-term project to create a privacy-minded search engine to rival Google’s. It could build an ad-free Instagram （its founders just left Facebook in frustration）. It could create a YouTube that isn’t a haven for neo-Nazis.

Some （or many） of these may be dumb ideas — ideas that would ruin Apple, or at the very least kneecap its short-run profits. But they are at least big ideas; they match in scope and daring what Apple was created to do. Let other companies handle streaming entertainment. To paraphrase a wise man: Does Mr. Cook want to sell prestige TV for the rest of his life, or does he want to change the world?