So tell me, how do you give a gift to someone that requires that person to be with you at the store when you buy it for them? Like, say, the iPhone 3G, which stupidly requires the person using (and paying for the service plan for) the phone to be physically at the store where they get the device?

Well, here’s what some genius at Apple came up with: the iPhone Gift Card. Of course, rather than just get the device yourself and give the physical device to the recipient so that they can immediately open it and start using it while they’re still in their PJs under the tree, how about we give them a gift card that may or may not be for the full value of the gift and force them to leave the house, find a nearby Apple Store (if they have one nearby since this card apparently doesn’t count at AT&T stores), make them wait in the inevitable line for their phone to get activated, and make them have to pay for their own service plan for the next two years?

It gets even crazier when you can consider that you could just get them an Apple Store Gift Card to do the same thing. (Or that, quite frankly, the iPhone Gift Card can be used for anything else in the store, so it might as well be an Apple Store Gift Card anyway!) Oh, and the thing can be loaded with up to $2500–that’s your choice of either, um, twelve and a half iPhones (or ten iPhones if you include sales tax), or it could be enough to pay for that iPhone and all of the cost of the two-year contract. Oh wait, the gift card can’t count towards that contract–man, that might have actually made it worth it.

Wouldn’t it have just been easier to go back to the way it was with the original iPhone where someone could buy you the physical device, wrap it up, and then when you unwrapped it, you could go onto iTunes and activate it by yourself on your own time in your own PJs? (Never mind that iTunes was slower than molasses on Christmas Day last year.)

So, here’s to the latest Sarcastically “Great” Idea: the iPhone Gift Card. May your wallet have mercy on your soul.

Tags: activation, Apple, crazy, gift card, gifts, holidays, iPhone, Sarcastically "Great" Idea, store