Apple's 'Back to School' promotion goes live with $100 gift cards for Mac purchases, $50 for iPhone and iPad

Apple on Tuesday revealed its "Back to School" sales promotion for summer 2014, offering $100 Apple Store Gift Cards for new Mac purchases and $50 Apple Store Gift Cards for iPhones and iPads.

Apple's 2014 Back-to-School Promo

Apple is offering gift cards redeemable on future purchases with from the Apple Store with eligible purchases. The offer is available to students and faculty looking to buy a Mac, iPhone or iPad.

Under the terms, students and teachers who purchase a new Mac are eligible for a $100 gift card, while iPad and iPhones sales comes with a $50 gift card. The promotional gift cards are offered on top of discounted student and faculty pricing as a way to drive education, a major source of revenue for the Cupertino company.

Currently, education purchases can net up to $200 off certain Mac models, while iPad savings tops out at $30. The iPhone, as usual, is not eligible for educational discounts and gift cards are not applicable to on-contract buys.

The summer Back to School promotion runs from July 1 through Sept. 9, 2014 and is available through the U.S. Online Apple Store and brick-and-mortar outlets.

Save even more through Apple online resellers

While Apple's Back-To-School sale offers complimentary $50-$100 Gift Cards on top of discounted education pricing, consumers who spend a few extra minutes online comparing prices for their desired Mac or iPad in our Price Guides will likely find more attractive deals from resellers that Apple regularly authorizes to offer its products at instant discounts that match or exceed the company's own educational discounts. Many of these authorized resellers also only charge sales tax in a handful of states. This adds an incremental $80 in savings for every $1000 spent on a Mac for most consumers. By contrast, Apple charges sales tax on all orders. A few reseller options to consider when pricing out your new Mac or iPad include:

MacMall: MacMall regularly stocks nearly every Mac configuration Apple offers, in additional to Built-To-Order models, at considerable discount and only charges sales tax on orders that ship to CA, CO, GA, IL, MN, NC, NY, TN, and WI. The Apple authorized reseller is also a long-time AppleInsider sponsor and exclusively offers readers an additional 3% off its already reduced pricing on all MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros when shoppers use the links in our Price Guide to activate the Promo / Coupon Code field on MacMall's product pages and then manually apply coupon code APPLEINSIDER01.

The offer is only good on orders placed online. Orders for out-of-stock items are filled in the order they are received, and often arrive quicker than the reseller's website indicates. When ordering an iPad through MacMall, shoppers must first register for a free MacMall Business Direct Account, even if you already have a MacMall account. It takes 10 seconds, is free, and requires nothing but your name and email address.

B&H: Another Apple Authorized Reseller and long-time AppleInsider sponsor, Manhattan-based B&H Photo Video similarly discounts hundreds of Apple SKUs on a regular basis and only charges sales tax to customers who ship their orders to NY. B&H is rarely out of stock of items, offers free shipping and copies of software with each order (like Parallels Desktop for Mac) and is also currently offering AI readers exclusive discounts on 3-year AppleCare Protection Plans when they are purchased alongside a new Mac — for instance, a 3-year AppleCare Protection Plan on a 13-inch MacBook Air would cost $179.99 rather than $249, while one on a 15-inch MacBook Pro fetches $244 instead of $349.

Best Buy: As detailed last month, Best Buy is currently running a College Tech promotion for students with a valid .EDU email address. After supplying a valid email (via this page) and then validating the email account, Best Buy will email coupons good for an additional $150 off its current MacBook and iMac pricing, as well as $50 off iPad Airs and Retina minis. Like Apple, however, Best Buy charges sales tax on all orders. Still, this offer has produced some record deals over the past week or so, mainly on entry level MacBook Airs and iMacs. Complete details are available here.

Adorama: Adorama is another Apple authorized reseller that's only recently begun to beef up its online efforts. It similarly offers steep discounts on a variety of MacBooks and Mac Desktops, with up to $250 off some MacBook Pros and $100 off roughly 100 different Mac Pro configurations. Adorama only charges sales tax on orders shipped to NY or NJ and offers readers similar discounts on AppleCare to the aforementioned ones from B&H. Shoppers must first take 20 seconds to register for a free Adorama VIP account before adding items to their cart. The free VIP account also comes with 30GB of free cloud storage.