Whose ASIC will ship first?

[Korbman]

Seems to be a hint to availability/function

BFGMiner is the one that works best so far, but I'm sure CGMiner will work just as well when the code is added.

From BFL_Josh

Good find, thanks for posting that.

[quasarbtc]

Has anyone seen any information on initial shipment quantities? Or how any of these companies will decide initial shipment sizes?

[niko]

whichever company has produced the asic first would be stupid not to wait with shipping until another company has finished it's asic.
mining in the meantime will make a fortune...

So company A creates ASICs, and starts mining on them. The difficulty triples (at least), and the entire network hates them. Company B comes out with an ASIC, and starts shipping, so Company A stops mining, and starts shipping?

I can guarantee you, no one would ever buy from Company A again, and there would be many returns.

Agreed. It's one thing to test out the hardware a bit here and there to make sure it meets specs, but if it turns out Company A was mining on the hardware to make some quick cash I'd be super pissed...mainly because they're now selling me a used product.

Even "testing ASICs a bit here and there" on the main net when product is not available to customers hurts existing GPU and FPGA miners - it directly takes away their profits under the pretense of "testing". There is testnet-in-a-box available, and any manufacturer testing on the main net is simply dishonest: it's not about testing, it's about taking away profits from miners.