Apple’s Back to School promotion slated to start Friday, free AirPods likely replaced with gift card

Every summer, Apple runs an annual Back to School promotion in the United States and other countries. This promo offers students and educators an added bonus when buying a new Mac or iPad. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports today that this year’s Back to School promo is scheduled to kick off on Friday, but with a slight change compared to previous years…

Apple’s 2022 Back to School promo

When Apple first started the yearly Back to School promo, it offered an Apple gift card with the purchase of a qualifying Mac or iPad. Several years ago, it switched from offering gift cards to offering a free pair of Beats headphones. In 2020, the offering again changed, with Apple giving a free pair of AirPods to education customers buying a Mac or iPad.

This year, however, Gurman says Apple’s Back to School promotion “may” switch back to offering a gift card rather than Beats or AirPods. The dollar value of the gift card is still unknown, but in years past, the gift cards were for $50 when buying an iPad and $100 when buying a Mac. We would hope that gift card amount is higher this year, but that’s not a guarantee.

Of course, education customers can also lock in a discounted price when buying a new Mac or iPad via the Apple Education Store, so the addition of the gift card is an added bonus on top of that.

It’s unclear why Apple would drop the free AirPods offer this year in favor of a gift card, but it likely has something to do with ongoing supply chain issues. The company could be hesitant to giveaway any sort of hardware product when it is already facing supply shortages and the looming threat of additional disruptions over the coming months.

Apple will likely announce the new Back to School promotion on Friday via a press release. This coincides with the launch of the new M2 MacBook Pro, which is likely to be a popular machine for students and educators the year.