If there's one thing I've learned about Apple's dealings with SIM cards in the past seven years, it's that Apple gets what Apple wants.
The little gold-plated circuits — which identify you as a subscriber on a particular carrier — plug into phones, tablets, and basically anything else with a cellular radio. Customers of GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile have been using them since time immemorial; CDMA carriers like Sprint and Verizon have started using them since switching to LTE. Apple hates SIMs, and has hated them for as long as the iPhone has existed: it is known to have explored the use of embedded, non-removable SIMs in the past.
Finally, with the iPad Air 2 and mini 3, Apple has decided to start making its move by using a reprogrammable SIM that can be taken from carrier to carrier, switching networks and pricing plans through user-friendly software alone. It's called "Apple SIM." Not every carrier is on board yet — Apple SIM is still removable, and carrier-bought iPads will use regular, locked SIMs — but the writing is on the wall. The wounds are mortal. Within a year or two, you'll probably never see a SIM card in an Apple product again. You may not even see a tray.
Within a year or two, you'll probably never see a SIM card in an Apple product again
Every time Apple has tweaked the SIM formula, it has won. Just look at the original iPhone in 2007: the notion of a handset with a SIM card that could only be accessed by triggering a fidgety little tray using a paper clip was insane. Yet today, many flagship smartphones are using them (the main holdouts are phones with replaceable batteries — another notion that Apple practically shut down). "SIM tools," little pieces of easy-to-lose steel that will prick you if you're not careful, just seem like a totally normal thing to find in the box of a new phone now.
Next there was 3FF — better known as micro-SIM — which debuted on the original iPad in 2010. At the time, it wasn't fun: Apple broke compatibility with an enormous ecosystem of GSM devices, which made sharing an account with your iPad a huge pain. Slowly, carriers started offering micro-SIMs, but you still needed a flimsy, hard-to-find adapter to use those cards anywhere else. (It took a full product cycle, more than a year, for other manufacturers to skate to Apple's puck.) Apple never looked back, switching to micro-SIM with the iPhone 4 later that same year..... [Contd...]
