My lit­tle sis­ter received a few iTunes gift cards this Christ­mas and asked me if she could use them to buy a case for her new iPod. I was cau­tious to assure her because I had never explic­itly heard of such a thing. I came home and explic­itly read the exact oppo­site thing:

What can I buy with an iTunes Gift Card or iTunes Gift Certificate?

iTunes Gift Cards and iTunes Gift Cer­tifi­cates can be used to pur­chase music, videos, TV shows, and audio books from the iTunes Store. At this time, iTunes Gift Cards and iTunes Gift Cer­tifi­cates are not accepted for online Apple Store purchases.

The vice versa reads:

Note: Apple Gift Cards can­not be redeemed at the iTunes Music Store.

Both of us imme­di­ately ques­tioned– Why? I thought Apple owned both the iTunes Store and their brick-and-mortar stores. That’s like say­ing your Wal­mart gift card is good in Sport­ing Goods by not in Electronics.

My only guess is that deals with media out­lets that pro­vide the music, videos, TV shows, and audio books from the iTunes Store are dif­fer­ent from the ven­dors that offer all the non-Apple prod­ucts from the Apple Stores. Shouldn’t they be able to han­dle this inter­nally instead of mak­ing two dif­fer­ent types of gift cards?

My other sis­ter is sav­ing up for a Mac­Book for high school and her grand­mother gave her an iTunes gift card with good inten­tions to help her, but it turns out it’ll only help her buy more Tay­lor Swift albums. What’s the deal? Why hasn’t Apple addressed this? I’d say try to exchange, but that doesn’t sound plau­si­ble accord­ing to the Apple Sup­port Dis­cus­sions.