Today I added my iPad Air 2 to my Verizon “Share Everything” plan. This basically means, that for $10 a month (plus ambiguous taxes and fees), I can use my iPad from the same data pool as my wife and my iPhones.

The iPad Air 2 with Cellular ships with an Apple SIM. The Apple SIM allows US customers to choose from AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile, without the need to worry about which model to buy. Apple benefits from not having different SKUs and we benefit from not being locked in.

The iPad Air 2 also works with Verizon, but not out-of-the-box. For unknown reasons that are probably “we don’t wanna!”, Verizon is not on the Apple SIM. You have to get a special Verizon SIM to be on the Verizon network.

Poking around the Verizon Wireless website, looking for a place to order a SIM, there was none. I engaged with a chat representative. He or she informed me that I’d have to go to a Store.

Today I went to a Verizon store (actually an authorized Verizon reseller, but it’s hard to tell the difference) to get my magic SIM. I told the clerk what I wanted, he opened my SIM tray, saw the Apple SIM, and said “uh, we don’t support this.” I politely told him he was mistaken, and he looked it up and got me on my way.

$15 later, with a SIM that the clerk literally got out of a jar because the first one he tried didn’t work, I had my iPad Air 2 on my Verizon plan.

Verizon is throwing money away by trying to take control back from Apple. People who don’t follow this stuff are never going to do what I did. They’re going to buy an iPad Air 2 and just choose service from one of the providers on the Apple SIM. Even if they know to go to the Verizon store, they might be turned away by an uninformed clerk.

Verizon is trying to get people to buy tablets from them. Verizon wants to change tablet buying from “buy anywhere” to “buy from your carrier’s store”. As John Gruber has often said, people buy phones at Verizon stores, people don’t buy tablets there. Not being on the Apple SIM is Verizon’s play to get that control that they enjoy in the phone space. They can scare their customers into thinking that the only way to get a compatible tablet is to buy from them. They can then incentivize their sales force into pushing non-iPads that they have more control over.

The good news is, I kept my Apple SIM. If I ever leave Verizon, I don’t have to worry about my iPad having a useless cellular radio.

EDIT: You can apparently get a Verizon-specific model or a Verizon SIM at an Apple Retail Store too, just not through Apple Online. I think Verizon just basically said “we don’t wanna” with no grand Bond-villain plan.