The SIM card is about to die

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...]

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