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The story
Apple has released a new model of its screen-cleaning polishing cloth for ¥1,580 — nearly half the price of the previous model — sparking plenty of discussion online. On 5ch, while some posters welcomed the price cut, many others took the chance to mock the whole idea of paying money for “just a cloth.”
Apple’s “Cloth” Nearly Half Price — New Model Goes on Sale for ¥1,580, What’s Changed – ITmedia NEWS
August 26, 2026, 11:44 AM
Author: Yuya Hayashi
Source: itmedia.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Kind of reminds me of a fukusa (a silk cloth used to wrap ceremonial gifts)
Never would've thought of a wet wipe. What are you, Mii-chan?
It's not branding, it's turned into a religion, lol
Macintosh also covers both computers and audio gear.
Macintosh — a variety of apple. McDonald's — Donald's son.
For wiping this screen
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>The Nano-texture etched into the glass at the nanometer level scatters light and further minimizes reflectivity. Choosing this option makes the display remarkably easier to see even in environments where light is hard to control, like strong sunlight.
That's because your mind's eye hasn't opened yet. Go buy a MacBook Pro.
Sounds like something a lonely old man in a run-down apartment would do.
Then maybe it could've warded off Taira no Masakado's curse too (a legendary vengeful samurai spirit tied to a Tokyo shrine), and that guy wouldn't have fallen from some weird place.
A vase might actually gain value in a thousand years, but a cloth won't even last that long.
Sounds like something 'Applo' (mocking nickname for Apple) would totally sell.
Stuff tied to Jobs has this rare-item feel somehow — like the limited-edition Mac signed by Steve Wozniak, or the NeXT computers that famously didn't sell at all.
Background and Key Points
Apple’s polishing cloth first appeared in 2021 as a companion product to the Pro Display XDR’s nano-texture glass option, an etched-glass finish designed to scatter light and cut reflections in bright environments. Because that etching is delicate, Apple sells a matching microfiber cloth alongside it; the previous model ran around ¥3,000, and the new one — cut to ¥1,580 — is tied to nano-texture displays on newer Macs and iPads rather than being a generic accessory. For readers unfamiliar with Japan, several posts lean on local references: お布施 (osefuse) means a donation offered to a Buddhist temple, invoked here to cast Apple purchases as religious tribute; a fukusa is the formal cloth used to wrap ceremonial gifts; and the jab about Tokyo confusing “Makku” for both Mac and McDonald’s plays on a real Kanto/Kansai dialect split, since Osaka shortens McDonald’s to “Makudo” instead.
The thread doesn’t really argue over whether ¥1,580 is objectively expensive — it splits between posters who see the price cut as a reasonable correction and posters who think paying anything for “just a cloth” is inherently absurd, with the joke escalating into comparing Apple fandom to a cult (the vase and Masakado-curse references draw on Japan’s history of spiritual-goods scams and urban legends).
What the thread leaves out is the actual functional reason the cloth exists: nano-texture glass can be permanently scratched or dulled by ordinary cloths, wipes, or clothing, so Apple’s cloth is formulated to be safe for that specific coating — a detail that reframes some of the “just use a wet wipe” jokes as riskier advice than posters realize.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “Apple’s “Cloth” Nearly Half Price — New Model Goes on Sale for ¥1,580, What’s Changed.”
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