On a day of high-priced product announcements, Apple has offered a crumb of comfort to its more cash-strapped customers: the beloved Polishing Cloth has dropped in price by a whopping 53 percent. Relentlessly memed on for charging a faintly absurd $19 for the square cloth at launch three years ago, the company is now happy to accept just $9 for seemingly the same product.
The common thread uniting Tuesday’s two big Mac updates was prices going up. The M6 Mac mini starts at $899, up from $599 for the equivalent M4 model just two months ago. The M5 Ultra Mac Studio, meanwhile, starts at $5,499, a price hike of another $200 over the previous price hike. But the Polishing Cloth went against the grain with a huge price drop.
Apple didn’t send out a press release advertising the nonabrasive fabric accessory’s new bargain price. Instead, it quietly removed the previous store entry (which carried the product code MW693AM/A) and put up a new one in its place (MLH74AM/A) with an updated price. Other than the price and code, it appears to be an identical product with an identical description.
As before, that includes the endlessly amusing Compatibility section, which lists every iPhone and iPad going back to 2012, every single Apple Watch, and a huge list of MacBooks. In some ways, it’s surprising the company bothered to make the list since the description makes it clear that the Polishing Cloth cleans any Apple display, but we appreciate the effort.
Whether this bargain price will last remains to be seen. Unlike other Apple devices the Polishing Cloth is unlikely to be affected by the ongoing memory shortage, but we’ll be monitoring international microfiber shipments with the greatest of interest.
