I don't understand why people are so upset about this... it sounds like a special kind of glass that obviously doesn't play well with coarser materials. It's the same reason you get a microfiber cloth with your glasses
Do you read the manual when you buy a monitor?
They're all pretty much the same and work out of the box, especially an Apple monitor. I can see a lot of people just setting up the monitor and tossing the manual. When they see the cloth, all they think is "cool, free cloth".
Also, you have to educate anyone who would think to clean or touch the monitor screen in your absence, like cleaning staff, significant others, your kids, visiting relatives, or whatnot.
Unless there's a huge warning sticker on the plastic that usually comes over the screen, I wouldn't even think that there was special care required.
Of course, that's assuming I'm setting up the monitor myself. In an office environment, it might not be set up by the actual user, and the user might not be given the manual or know about any special care requirements.
The only reason why this special cloth even made the headlines and why it's a hot topic for discussion is because it is considered an outlier from a care perspective.
Because in an office all it takes is one cleaner or coworker to not know to leave that display alone and they could damage your expensive display.
Anecdote: Our state capitol dome was being renovated. Involved slowly sanding off 150 years of accumulated lead paint with respirators. Tedious, hot, cramped work.
They were told under no circumstances to use a torch (the usual way of removing layers of heavy paint) to melt the accumulation off. Because of very dry wood etc, it was a fire hazard.
During lunch break, one new guy thought that was silly, got a torch, went back up to try it and prove to everybody it was really the best way.
Of course, the wood heated up, the shredded-cellulite insulation inside the wall caught fire.
We lost the entire capitol dome to the resulting conflagration. (The well-meaning worker survived).
So, even intelligent creative people (especially so maybe) can do dumb things. Because they think they know better.
Presumably, Apple didn't use this fragile coating just for the heck of it. They chose this coating because it was the only way to make this monitor to perform in the way they wanted. Should Apple have just made a worse monitor because the coating is fragile?
(BTW, we don't know what will actually happen if the screen is cleaned improperly. The monitor won't necessarily become an instant piece of junk.)
This isn't a regular display. It's a super-expensive professional instrument. The only people buying this are going to be photo editors, Hollywood people, graphic artists, etc.
To me, it makes more sense to include or offer a dust cover (presumably lined with the same material as the special cloth) to put on it when it's not in use.