Very smart move by Apple.
Instead of taking $100 off the price, savings which can be spent anywhere you want (including an Apple competitor), you'll instead get a gift card that can only be spent with Apple. Very clever way of still getting you to pay full price for a device and still have to do further business with Apple when using the gift card.
I know, it's still $25/$50/$100/whatever you don't have to spend out of your pocket, but how many people will buy a Mac (for example) and use the $100 gift card towards something like an iPad (for example) because of the savings? Now you've spent $1,200+ on a Mac plus another $500+ on an iPad. Instead of getting you to spend $1,100 on one product (Mac on a $100 discount), they've gotten $1,600 out of you (after knocking $100 off the iPad with the gift card), plus with a new iPad comes the potential for more app purchases and additional integration to the Apple ecosystem.
That's fine if you were going to buy an iPad anyway but I'm sure the gift cards will tempt a LOT of people into buying another product that they didn't need at the time, but all of a sudden they want because they have a gift card that knocks the price down a touch. Apple sells two devices instead of one and even with the $100 "discount" via gift card they've still made a hefty profit thanks to big margins, plus it's another iPad out there consuming apps and content. Someone could easily re-spend that $100 savings on apps and music over the course of ownership.
It's a brilliant strategy, really
Smart move by Apple, crappy for the customer. This is not a real discount. As stated previously, one is generally better off not buying from Apple. On Black Friday this is even more true.
