Comcast (CMCS) is now on the iPhone bandwagon. On Thursday, Comcast, the largest cable operator in the U.S. by subscribers, announced a free application for the Apple (AAPL) device that lets customers check their Comcast email and home voice mail as well as surf their TV schedules.

Still to come: the ability to program DVRs at home from mobile devices, the way that rivals like DirecTV (DTV), Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T) do.

But the application has gotten largely positive reviews in the blogosphere. Gizmodo calls it a “surprisingly nice little app,” while MobileCrunch says it’s “a good, solid offering that’s a no-brainer for iPhone owners who subscribe to and use Comcast’s voice, internet, and cable services.”

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Pretty much nobody is picking up the phone at equity research firm Argus Research this morning, so take this as unverified: The firm’s analyst on Apple (AAPL), Wendy Abramowitz, this morning lowered her price target on Apple to $145 from $155, while affirming that she does not believe Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s health is deteriorating, as had been the speculation of a post on gadget site Gizmodo on Tuesday. Abramowitz lowered her earnings estimate for Apple for the December-ended fiscal Q1, from $10.1 billion and $1.54 in EPS to $9.7 billion and $1.52, which appears to have mainly to do with the fact that December’s margins will be lower than the December quarter of 2007 when the company was riding the release of the Leopard operating system.

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After a grueling eight-city coast-to-coast test of the 3G networks run by AT&T (T), Sprint (S) and Verizon (VZ), we’ve come up with some clear-cut test results. Think you know who has the best network? Think again.

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I’m tired of this. This sense of permanent discomfort with the technology around me. The bugs. The compromises. The firmware upgrades. The “This will work in the next version.” The “It’s in our road map.” The “Buy now and upgrade later.” The patches. The new low development standards that make technology fail because it wasn’t tested enough before reaching our hands. The feeling now extends to hardware: Everything is built to end up in the trash a year later, still half-baked, to make room for the next hardware revision. I’m tired of this beta culture that has spread like metastatic cancer in the last few years, starting with software from Google (GOOG) and others and ending up in almost every gadget and computer system around. We need a change.

Take the iPhone, for example, one of the most successful products in the history of consumer electronics. We like it, I love mine, but the fact is that the first generation was rushed out, lacking basic features that were added in later releases or are not here yet. Worse: The iPhone 3G was really broken.

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If you are reading this, then my mission is probably over. This final entry is one that I asked be posted after my mission team announces they’ve lost contact with me. Today is that day and I must say goodbye, but I do it in triumph and not in grief.

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As tomorrow’s Apple event looms, rumors of new iPods grow louder. And it’s tough not to be at least a little excited. Ever since the original iPod was unveiled in 2001, Apple has wowed us time and time again by presenting the next piece of design evolution–an iPod that will be better than the last in every way–style, form and function. In a world when technological improvements can be hard for the naked eye to appreciate, Apple has given us the most simple metric of man’s capabilities: A pocket music player.

But Apple has plateaued with the traditional iPod. In fact, each subsequent firmware update has added features that come with more confusing menus and extra clicks; meanwhile the iPhone and iPod touch seem to be able to take added features more easily in stride. And while every iPod has gotten a little bit bigger in storage and smaller in size, it has become a software-bulky device, an overweight ghost of its former understated brilliance. So whether or not we see the iPod touch nano tomorrow or not, it needs to happen soon.

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A year ago, we said that no iPhone SDK meant no killer apps. It came, and the apps are here in staggering numbers. But many of the amazing apps and concepts we grew to love as unofficial apps aren’t here, and only about 100 of the 500+ apps at launch in the official store are really useful or desirable—the rest are dupes or just bad. There are no less than five apps to turn my iPhone into a flashlight, yet I can’t turn it into a 3G-powered Wi-Fi hotspot. Why?

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There are few things more enjoyable on a hot summer’s day than an epic water-gun battle with some friends. In the end, everybody wins, because everybody gets soaked and cools down. But you don’t want to be caught with a crappy gun; then you’ll just be the guy that everyone else gangs up on. Which is why we took on the horrible, difficult task of playing with testing five of this season’s hottest water guns under $20 to find out which one is going to give you the most splash for your cash.

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When we spoke to AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph De La Vega a few months ago, he said AT&T was open to the possibility of Google’s Android phones being on their network. Today, at CTIA, he followed up on this and said that he’s already met with Google executives and is “encouraged by the idea that an Android phone could host AT&T branded apps.”

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A Gizmodo writer has been banned from CES for a prank. But when I see some fellow press damning us for the joke, I feel sorry for them: When did journalists become the protectors of corporations? When did this industry, defined by pranksters like Woz, get so serious and in-the-pocket of big business? This is totally pathetic.

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OMG, I can hear the fanboys battling already. Here’s a video from last night’s CES 2008 keynote, Bill Gates’s last for the foreseeable future. And I know it’s scripted, edited and contrived, but I’m sold: The man is a cool geek.

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