Apple iPad’s Tiny SIM Is Just There to Mess With You | Hacker News Reader

Apple iPad’s Tiny SIM Is Just There to Mess With You

wired.com

13 pointsbrk20 comments

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I have been thinking about this last week. First I thought it was some sort of "conspiracy", to make us all buy new data plans. However, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense: Apple just always goes with the newest and latest. They have changed their display ports about 4 times over the last few years, as new standards erupted, while the old would have sufficed. Why not do that for sim cards? Also, it's not really an issue, as you can just cut your current sim to fit the iPad. I'm sure as soon as the iPad gets any traction, there will be tools for this, as well as cheap plastic adapters to fit the uSim in your current phone.

They are making good money with display adapters. Mine cost 30€ from the Apple store (MiniDVI -> DVI).

I don't know if Monoprice ships to Europe, but there has to be a better alternative to the Apple Store there. You can get a comparable cable from Monoprice for about 8 Euros.

I bought a used pre-unibody because the mini-dvi to dual dvi adaptor is $99, and that made the price difference too great.

Isn't it also possible that the next iPhone will have a micro SIM as well, and that Apple is simply going for (eventual) parity across their product line? I certainly think that interior space may well be at a premium in the next iPhone, necessitating the need for the smaller form factor.

Precisely. The article has a strange inability to look forward in time.

I also wouldn't trust these journalists and their crack team of wild guessers to know for sure that space isn't a premium even in the iPad itself. You can't judge a book by its cover, and you can't judge the internals of a piece of modern portable electronics by squinting at the outer case. The engineers have to pack a lot of stuff into these devices, in a specific configuration, as well as leaving room for the next generation of stuff. (Does anybody doubt that the iPad will someday grow a camera? That it might someday need a CDMA multiplexer?) And the size of the SIM may well have ramifications: It affects the size of the access panel that leads to the SIM, for example. It also has to be placed in a spot on the motherboard that makes it easy to omit, since not all iPads will have a SIM, and such space may be at more of a premium than we think...

Does anybody doubt that the iPad will someday grow a camera?

I don't doubt that the iPad could grow a camera. But it seems to me that it's not technical limitations keeping a camera from the iPad. I wonder if it's just the awkwardness of holding an iPad in the way necessary to take photos that led Steve Job to scrap the idea. He'd rather leave a feature off entirely than have it be implemented in an inelegant way.

This article is gonna look pretty stupid when the next iPhone uses a micro SIM.

That whole micro SIM thing is really pretty ridiculous. Imagine for a moment a world in which the iPad uses a normal SIM card. Space is certainly no problem. But there is this other device where space is a problem. How was it called again? Oh, right! iPhone. It seems more than reasonable that Apple would put a micro SIM in there as soon as possible. So now, what do we have in this hypothetical world? Incompatible SIMs! The press gets to write the exact same story, no matter what Apple does! Yay!

Interesting. I was under the impression all I needed to turn a SIM into a micro-SIM (or whatever they are called) is a sharp blade and a little eye-hand coordination. If I don't mess up big, all I need to build an adapter that allows me to use my newly made micro-SIM on any GSM phone are the plastic pieces I cut off, some glue and a little bit of thin, rigid, plastic to help hold the freshly made micro-SIM in place.

Seriously... Are all these articles about how Apple is out to screw AT&T's customers really necessary?

Looks like a nice opportunity for someone to make a micro-sim to sim adapter. That can't be that hard, it's just a mechanical adaptation.

Manufacturers have used incompatibility to achieve business goals for the longest time, check out the print cartridges and the diagnosis plugs on european cars.

Now if apple would have come up with a proprietary sim card that would be (bad) news.

It's pretty clear they don't want you to use your Iphone voice plan on the Ipad anyway because it can't make voice calls.

"This way, they can charge customers twice for 3G wireless data: Once for the iPhone, and once for the iPad."

How braindead would a customer have to be to fall for that? Alternatively, the customer could just be super-rich and not care.

How else are they going to get 3G access?

AT&T is going to say, "sorry, we can't give you a micro-SIM, because your plan is for the iPhone" or "sorry, we can't give you a normal-SIM, your plan is for the iPad". End of story, as the 3G radios only work on AT&T's network.

My guess is that the 3G version is just not going to sell very well. It's super-expensive initially, and has a super-expensive monthly cost too.

If a large SIM can be cut with scissors and turned into a small SIM, the small SIM can be slid into an insert (purchased for a buck or two, or simply cut out of plastic or cardstock) and turned back into a big SIM.

I think it more likely that the sheer hassle of swapping out SIMs every time you want to switch devices (or take a phone call while using the iPad) will mitigate against doing this all the time. But there's no reason one couldn't do it.

I'm leaning toward the "buy a WiFi iPad and an optional MeFi box" option at the moment -- that way I keep my phone a phone, diversify my wireless options, and get WiFi for my laptop as well as the iPad. But I will need to do a bit more research and budgeting.

I think the 3G iPad is likely to be a lot more popular outside the US where there's real competition in the mobile phone/data market.

Although the use of a micro-SIM will be a drawback there, unless you cut down a normal SIM.

Maybe you could do tethering with the iPhone? Or another phone...

Is it possible to get the same data plan on multiple SIM cards?

Surely, it must be possible to make a non-hideous adapter? I imagine, though, that it must be more complex than a microSD -> SD adapter, or someone would have said something already.

You can file a regular "mini" SIM down to size.

The same is true of hard drives, and monitors. Snort

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