Apple now sells a $19 'polishing cloth' to clean your screens, and two of Apple's most expensive products actually need it

Unless you have the $6,000 nano-texture glass Pro Display XDR or 27-inch iMacs with the optional $500 nano-texture glass upgrade, you can use a normal microfiber cloth.

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Apple now sells a $19 polishing cloth to clean your Apple device screens.
It's not necessary for most Apple devices, except for those with nano-texture glass screens.
For most of your Apple devices, including iPhones, iPads, and even Mac laptop screens, a good and inexpensive microfiber cloth will do just fine.

When Apple launched its new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, it also quietly added a new product in its accessories lineup — a $19 polishing cloth.

Apple says the polishing cloth is "made with soft, nonabrasive material," and it "cleans any Apple display, including nano-texture glass, safely and effectively." Somewhat comically, it also shows a list of "compatible devices," which includes anything with a screen that Apple makes or has made in the last few years.

For the majority of Apple devices like iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, and Mac laptops and screens, a suitable and significantly cheaper microfiber cloth will do just fine. In fact, you can get a 24-pack of microfiber cloth pads for less than Apple's.

Indeed, I've used a variety of microfiber cloths, paper towels, t-shirts, and even my jeans to wipe the iPhone 12 Pro Max's screen, and the phone's ceramic glass has held up without any sign of scratches. And that's without a screen protector.

I'm more careful with my MacBook Pro's screen, however, and I limit cleaning duties to one of the dozens of microfiber cloths I have laying around. So far, so good.

The company is known for making expensive products, including mundane accessories like the cloth itself, or the $700 Mac Pro wheel kit.

However, Apple's polishing cloth is actually a requirement for certain devices, including the company's $6,000 nano-texture glass Pro Display XDR or 27-inch iMacs with the optional $500 nano-texture glass upgrade.

Apple's special polishing cloth comes included with these nano-texture glassed devices, and the company strongly warns against using anything else. Presumably, cleaning a nano-texture glass device with a standard microfiber cloth could damage or negatively affect the glare-reducing properties of Apple's nano-scale etching on the glass.

Apple urged owners of these nano-texture glass devices to buy a replacement polishing cloth in the past if it was lost, but the price of the replacement cloth was never disclosed. Now, we know it costs $19.

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