Developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Just: wow.

When Larry Page asked Steve Jobs for advice, did Jobs tell him to drop that ridiculous “Don’t be evil” thing? My take on Google’s embrace of the dark side is here on the Daily Beast.

Panderific.  No,  really.

“Cognitive dissonance” is the way to describe what I’m feeling this morning after reading this amazing, blistering investigative piece in the New York Times about Apple and its Chinese manufacturing partners. This time former employees at Apple and Foxconn are speaking out, and the picture is worse than previously believed. Even the notion that “every company does business this way in China” (which many people, myself included, have espoused) turns out not to be true. Apple, according to the article, is worse than the others. It pushes suppliers so hard that the only way they can make a profit is to cut corners and hurt workers. If the article is to believed, Apple does this knowingly. While Apple talks a lot about inspecting factories and dormitories, and insisting on a code of conduct, in reality these inspections don’t accomplish very much. Meanwhile, factories blow up. Read the article and see if you can ever forget the story about the guy who got his face blown off and died when a completely preventable aluminum dust explosion ripped through his workspace.

It’s all incredibly depressing and disappointing.

And confusing, too, because this side of Apple contradicts so sharply with the Apple that all of us experience. It seems there are two different Apples — the one that deals with suppliers and the one that deals with customers. And the two are so different as to be almost unrecognizable. Earlier this week when Apple reported its jaw-dropping financial results for the fourth quarter, I wrote an article for the Daily Beast saying that Apple deserves every bit of its success, because it was winning the old-fashioned way, by making great products and delivering awesome customer service.

If you’re an Apple customer and you’ve ever had to deal with Apple customer service, you no doubt know what I’m talking about. They’re consistently amazing. They’re beyond pretty much anything I’ve ever experienced with any other company. They’re friendly. They’re generous. They’re kind. What’s more, this feels sincere. Apple truly has created a culture that is built around treating customers extraordinarily well. Moreover, over the years I’ve met people who work at Apple, and they are good people who really believe in what they are doing.

Of course Apple isn’t being nice to customers for the sake of being nice. It’s smart business. And it’s so obvious that you wonder why all companies don’t do this. For whatever reason, most don’t. But Apple does. It may be the biggest part of Apple’s value proposition — the fact that, if anything goes wrong, you know Apple will take care of it for you.

So maybe this two-faced culture makes sense from a business perspective: Treat customers like royalty + treat suppliers like slaves = profit.

But a real sense of discomfort arises from being the one who benefits from that bargain.

I don’t begrudge Apple its profits or its $100 billion in cash. The problem I’m having isn’t with Apple, but with me.

In our household we have two iMacs, four MacBooks, four iPhones, a Time Capsule, two Apple TVs, an old Mac Mini and countless iPods.

I love these products. I love Apple’s customer service. I’ve recommended Apple products to countless friends and relatives.

I hate feeling crappy about that. But right now I do.

Apple has enough money and enough influence to change this. They could make things right. It might not be easy, or cheap. But they could do it.

Apple could make the face they show to suppliers more like the one they show to us. I hope they will.

Great products. An ecosystem of hardware-software-content. Fantastic customer service. Brilliant marketing. Awesome retail stores. World-beating supply chain and operational expertise. This is a company unlike anything any of us have ever seen. They have earned every bit of their success. And they are only getting stronger. My longer take on today’s phenomenal earnings report is here on the Daily Beast.

As I reported in this week’s Newsweek, Apple’s “thermonuclear war” on Android smartphone makers has been fizzling out lately. Most of Apple’s legal claims have been tossed out, and the two minor victories Apple has scored were so trivial that opponents could work around the claim by making minor changes to their products.

But a person close to the situation tells me there’s a rumor going around among the lawyers that Apple spent $100 million just on its first set of claims against HTC.

Who knows if it’s true, but if so, Apple didn’t get a lot for its money.

Apple brought the case against HTC with the International Trade Commission in February, 2010. Apple wanted the ITC to block HTC from importing products into the United States.

Apple’s case against HTC started out with 84 claims based on 10 patents. But by the time the case got to a judge only four patents were involved.

The final ruling was that one patent was totally invalid because of prior art, and should never have been issued to Apple. On two other patents, the ruling was that HTC was not infringing on the patents, and, worse yet, that Apple itself was not using those patents in its own product, which means Apple had no right to seek an injunction based on them. (ITC injunctions are intended to protect “domestic industry,” and to get one you need to show that you are “practicing” the patent that you claim someone else is infringing.)

On the last patent the ITC found that HTC was infringing and that Apple was practicing the patent.

That got reported as a victory for Apple. But in reality the infringement involved a relatively tiny software feature, one that lets you press on a phone number in an email or Web page and bring up a menu from which you can choose to call the number, send a text message, and so on.

HTC can resolve the infringement simply be removing that feature from phones it sells in the United States, or by finding a different way to implement that feature that sidesteps the patent.

So Apple started out with 10 patents — presumably its best ones — and ended up with a tiny victory on just one. Was that worth $100 million?

Apple certainly can afford the legal fees, and shows no sign of letting up.

Apple has a second complaint against HTC pending at the ITC, involving other patents, with a ruling expected by March 2013. Both of these cases, the one that’s been ruled on and the one that is pending, have also been filed with district courts in the U.S., though those cases have been stayed pending the outcome of the ITC cases.

HTC has two claims pending against Apple with the ITC as well, the first one due for a decision next month and the second in April 2013. And then there are other claims, all over the world, against HTC, Samsung and Motorola.

But all of those guys are now suing Apple as well. Apple already got its ass kicked by Nokia and had to pay royalties for infringing on Nokia patents.

Eventually everyone is going to settle. (Steve Jobs may have wanted to drive Android out of existence, but that’s probably not going to happen.) The question is what kind of terms will everyone get in these settlements. The court fights are really just a way of jockeying for position and trying to gain leverage for the great settlement that is yet to come.

In that sense, whatever Apple is spending on legal fees is probably money well spent.