How much do you love your Apple (AAPL) iPad and iPhone? Would you be willing to make them?

As you know, many of the electronic products we enjoy are made by factory workers overseas. Foxconn, located near Hong Kong in Shenzhen, China, is one of the big manufacturers of all things electronic. It employs about 300,000 workers who will be getting a hefty 30% raise in October to 2,000 yuan per month. After several suicides among its employees, the company has been under pressure to improve working conditions at its factories.

Dell (DELL), which has struggled as of late in keeping up with PC market leader Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and a resurgent Acer, will be selling one of its factories in Poland to Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn. Along with the sale, 1,600 Dell employees at that facility will become employees of Foxconn.

Following his departure from Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) on Friday, Kai-fu Lee announced via Twitter that he was planning to launch a new venture fund. Today, he revealed the guts of a $115 million venture capital company that is focused on angel-round financing.

The company, Innovation Works, hopes to launch five successful start-ups a year in China. In addition to investing money in hot prospects, Innovation Works will act as an incubator for the businesses it backs. This approach doesn't exist yet in China.

Several months ago iPhone speculation began to ramp up pretty hard, with journalists and Apple rumor sites jumping hard on any hint, patent, or whiff of the device that everyone really, really seems to hope Apple will be making. Particularly after the disappointing rollout of Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Motorola's cellphone/iTunes collaboration.

Apple rumor site Think Secret picked up on a story from the The Commercial Times that indicated Hon Hai (Foxconn) would be making 12 million cellphone devices for Apple, and the source seems meaty enough that regular news outlets are following along. The devices are set to ship out during the first half of 2007, which could be why Apple executives were so excited about what 2007 would bring during their last earnings report. Investors should use caution on using just this information for investing purposes, as Hon Hai has declined to comment, and Apple sure isn't confirming it!

What kind of impact could this device have? Analyst Andy Neff over at Bear Stearns thinks it would jack Apple earnings up some 22%, even accounting for iPhone sales cannibalizing iPod sales.

The question is, would the iPhone pull the iPod line well ahead of the Zune? And is it a device people want?

Apple stock was up $1.30 to $85.35 when this story was written, a 1.55% increase in price.

Tobias Buckell is a freelance writer, author, and professional blogger who owns stock in Apple Computer.

Apple finished the day at $57.27, down X$1.70. Today saw some good news for Apple. Covered already was the good news in Maine, providing Apple a strong place in exposing students to its product and generating a nice bulk purchase deal with the Maine education system.

Also of recent note is that Intel will start shipping the new "Yonah" chips that will make their way into future iMacs, MacBooks, and other Apple computers. Over previous years Apple continuously struggled with suppliers to get updated processing chips, it must be a breath of fresh air over at Cupertino for it to be raining new versions of chips.

Businessweek took a close look at the Apple/Foxconn situation, weighing in with a unique suggestion of their own: that Apple create its own factory in China that it can more closely control. No matter what Apple's investigation shows, a lot of eyes are carefully watching to see how they'll handle this.

[Disclosure: I own Apple stock at the date of this post]

Apple ended the day at $57.43, down $1.56, a sudden 2.64% slide. The internet is still trying to figure out whether more information can be found about Apple's working conditions at Foxconn, or whether it is an unfounded attack. Meanwhile, the normally media savvy computer maker's special investigation team signed off on the factor conditions, and Apple has not really responded to the growing coverage in mac-focused blogs and sites.

A new, very minor update to Apple's operating system was released today. The next major version of the system will be previewed at WWDC, a developers conference for Apple, on August 7th. The next version of the OS will come out in late 2006 or early 2007.

Also, a new store seems to be in the pipeline for Cleveland, bringing the brand further into the heartland.

[Disclosure: I own Apple stock at the date of this post]

Apple finished the day up 16 cents at $58.99, a nice little bump for the stock. However, today saw some tough news that might damage Apple's above-average image.

The company producing Apple's iPods, Foxconn, admitted that it broke Chinese labor law by forcing employees to work 80 extra hours a month above and beyond their normal schedules. They noted that Apple did sent a special team to investigate, and claim that their complicated salary structure leads to outsiders getting confused about who is getting paid what.

These replies still avoid the mentions of armed guards and low pay, curiously enough. It'll be interesting to see how Apple corporate handles this and will certainly tell us a lot about how Apple views corporate social responsibility.

[Disclosure: I own Apple stock at the date of this post]