I don't read any of those sites, except occasionally when linked from HN.

The closest I come is sometimes catching up on macrumors when I'm bored.

What you're seeing in my comments is not mindless repetition of someone else's talking point, it's my own opinion derived from my experience with both Apple and the mobile phone industry.

That aside, I'm not sure I've really said anything 'pro-Apple' at all. What I said was that this isn't anything new and that Apple's behaviour makes sense given their business model. I've also dismissed the idea that Apple ever had a majority of the market (surely that would be ANTI-Apple, to so much as imply that other people might also make decent phones!) and tried to argue against mindless polarisation.

If you want to talk about something that's influenced by American politics, talk about people who believe that everything is split down into distinct 'winners' and 'losers' with no subtlety at all. From my limited exposure to American politics (The Daily Show, our reporting of your news, and American friends (mostly left-wing) and family (mostly right-wing)) that 'us or them' seems to be perhaps the defining feature of American politics right now.

But now I'm really digressing.

[Edit: my comment might look a little random now. Originally the comment I was replying to had references to pro-Mac bloggers and implied that I was simply repeating their ideas in an 'echo chamber' effect, and compared it to political discourse being led the same way.]