Apple ties iPads to carrier with Micro SIMs?

Once again John Strand is spreading FUD in the danish press. This time Apples new iPad is the target, and this insanely stupid quote from Politiken.dk says it all:

Apple indfører i iPad’en et nyt SIM-kort, som giver brugeren teknologiske håndjern på. Der er ikke andet end kommercielle tanker bag at indføre et nyt format, og det ser ud, som om denne teknologilås alene skal gøre det nemt at malke kunderne.

Roughly translated, John Strand says "Apple is chaining their customers to one carrier by introducing the micro-SIM standard when only one carrier is supporting it - and they are doing it solely for commercial reasons".

{% pullquote %} Guess what... {" All current and future danish carriers support the micro-SIM standard! "} The micro-SIM was developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. It has been around since 1998 and was agreed upon in 2003 by the SMG9 UMTS Working Party which is the standards setting body for GSM SIM cards. The micro-SIM was created with backwards compatibility in mind, and the contact surface of the SIM card is exactly the same as on a mini-SIM and on a full size SIM card.

Dear John, if you want to bypass these technological handcuffs from Apple, simply go to your nearest hardware store and buy a good pair of scissors and cut¹ the excess plastic from your current SIM card.

It's really not that hard...

I find it sad that "experts" like John Strand get this kind of exposure in the danish media. I find it equally sad that Politiken didn't bother to fact check the so called "expert" statements set forth in the article.

Don't spread Fear, uncertainty and doubt - I.e. don't pretend to be an expert when you so clearly are anything but an expert.