WTF?! Apple recently added two more highly-desirable items to its product line in the form of the new MacBook Pros and iPhone 13. But which of its many devices would you imagine is the most difficult to get hold of right now? Bizarrely, it's not a laptop or phone; it's a $19 polishing cloth.
Last month brought news that Apple's reputation for overpricing products wasn't going away. Joining the infamous $400 Mac Pro wheels and $1,000 monitor stand for the Pro Display XDR was a $19 polishing cloth, which is doubtlessly very similar or exactly the same as the one it recommended to buyers of its nano-textured Pro Display XDR monitor.
The 6.3-inch X 6.3-inch cloth, which boasts "soft, nonabrasive material" made from a nonwoven microfiber, brought plenty of mockery from those who aren't Apple fans, but the New York Times reports that it's the company's most backordered new release. If you really want a $19 piece of material with an Apple logo, be prepared to wait 10 to 12 weeks---that means you won't be able to caress your $6,000+ MacBook Pro with it until at least January 2022.
While Apple hasn't been impacted by the chip shortage as severely as other firms, the company isn't completely immune to the situation's effects. Despite iFixit confirming in its jokey teardown of the cloth (after the MacBook Pro teardown) that there are definitely no electronics hidden within, it seems even a piece of expensive material is seeing demand far outweigh supply. And like so many other hard-to-find products, the cloth is already appearing on eBay for two to three times its MSRP.