A car that has been at least decently maintained should never need anything more than just the spray cleaner.
But if you make a habit of driving dusty roads daily, running without an airfiler, running an airfilter with a hole, or you get alot of gunk recirculating back to the intake, then the pipe cleaner method is a good way to clean it up once then maintain it with the spray cleaner.
Whenever I clean my filter I clean my MAF.
