9 ms·

Fable is winding down

38 points by timmb 2y ago

blacksqr 2y ago
Do they live happily ever after?
ryanwhitney 2y ago
Sad, I’ve been waiting for the “figma of after effects”—one of the few positive (albeit unlikely) potentials around the failed adobe purchase. “However, by the time we started to take Fable to market, AI was beginning to challenge the very nature of software itself, and our multi-modal bet with Prism wasn’t enough to cut through. And while we hold a strong pov on how the next generation of creative workflows should evolve, unfortunately, we don’t have the time to get there.” Failed AI bet?
a1o 2y ago
Has someone reimplemented the flash Editor in some open source project? I know there's a player made in rust.
moralestapia 2y ago
If the founders drop by this thread: * Please open source it! * This is the best conclusion for everybody involved.
- franze 2y ago
  Open Sourcing is a lot of work. Plus it might contain (even huge) parts that can not be open sourced. And even unknown parts where real ownership and patents might be unknown.
  - stonogo 2y ago
    Where did this bizarre myth start? You apache-license the code you wrote, write a paragraph about code isn't yours or you're not sure about and is therefore missing, and move on with your life. Patent indemnification is not your problem, it's the problem of whoever wants to use the code.
    - zeroclicks 2y ago
      Exactly. If the company is winding down anyways, it's hard for things to get worse anyways.
    - moralestapia 2y ago
      Can't agree more. Erlang, FoundationDB, there's plenty of success stories of products who were EOL at some point and open sourcing was the thing that made them explode in popularity. I think Fable is a very-high quality product, it's unfortunate it didn't materialize as a business, but the software has enough quality and popularity to maybe become something like the Blender of that niche; a thing that would be extremely beneficial to any of the founders' future endeavors.
oidar 2y ago
The app is built, why not just let it simmer for awhile. Are the costs of running it greater than the money it brings in?
- unshavedyak 2y ago
  It's a great reason why webapps suck. A licensed local app would be great here, as the customer wouldn't lose value when Fable disappears. Yet now customers lose all value. Great. So frustrating as a user.
  - thewebguyd 2y ago
    Yep. I lament the loss of native, local apps all the time (and the prevalence of "always online" local apps - I've seen LoB apps that were promising, native apps only to find out they won't run offline because the app does a license check online at startup and will refuse to launch without a connection). Everything as SaaS web apps is just yet another chapter in the enshittification of tech.
    - pc86 2y ago
      > I've seen LoB apps that were promising, native apps only to find out they won't run offline because the app does a license check online at startup and will refuse to launch without a connection Isn't this fine as long as this is the only thing it does? "Making sure this has been paid for" seems completely legitimate.
      - thewebguyd 2y ago
        Totally fine and legitimate, the problem comes in situations where you might need to launch without an active internet connection. Arguably this wasn't the best vendor in the world, but IMO there should be a grace period, i.e., must connect at least x times per months instead of at every start up.
  - samuelstros 2y ago
    Webapps will work locally soon. Say hello to OPFS https://web.dev/articles/origin-private-file-system https://web.dev/articles/origin-private-file-system. Works surprisingly good, see this demo app https://fink2.onrender.com/ https://fink2.onrender.com/
notpushkin 2y ago
> On November 15, 2024, the Fable product will be shut down. All users will no longer be able to sign up, log in, or access files. All customer data and project files will be permanently deleted [...] > We recommend you look through your Fable files and export your projects off the platform (e.g. to mp4, gif, lottie… etc). I genuinely am at a loss for words here. Somebody sat down and decided that giving you your project sources in some form is too much work, just a GIF export will do. (For those looking to save their data: go for Lottie, it’s a bit more versatile and you can preserve vector data at least.) EDIT: the ideal way to go here would of course be open sourcing the whole thing!
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  Was Fable using a well-known format, or is it a proprietary format specific to the app ? If it's proprietary, would it make any sense to export it directly? Is it even a file format, or is it possible they were simply storing various pieces of data related to your project in various places in backend DBs?
  - sentientslug 2y ago
    Says in the article “the Fable file format is not transferable to other platforms.”
    - webstrand 2y ago
      So export a structured dump of all relevant data and leave it up to someone else to decipher.
      - gus_massa 2y ago
        I agree. I deciphered a few weird formats, for example the raw format of an old camera, the save files of drawings in WinWord 1. It's easier if you can make a few custom small examples, for example in the drawings use only one line, then two, then tree. They were binary formats, so the trick was to use an hex editor and look at them for a long time and make a few guess. I never deciphered them 100%, but I had enough info to read the files I care about and create new files. Sometimes you get a riff format and a big chunk of the guesswork is solved. And most modern formats are just a bunch of xml files inside a tar.gz , so now the first step is to change the extension to .zip and cross your fingers.
SoftTalker 2y ago
It always amazes me how many of these "we're winding down X" stories hit the front page here and I've never heard of X. We really do work in silos, even if it doesn't seem that way.
- parsimo2010 2y ago
  Or maybe it's that you're well informed and X wasn't well known... When a product shuts down it's usually because it wasn't profitable (or not profitable enough). Either they didn't get enough paying customers or they set their pricing too low. For whatever reason- but there's probably some correlation between a product shutting down and many people not being aware of its existence. Even without being well known, these stories can hit the front page if a few people upvote a post quickly, and then the post gets a few sympathy votes as it rises up the page.
  - turnsout 2y ago
    When a VC-backed company shuts down, it's usually because they weren't growing. You can only get to the next round of funding if you're still growing—otherwise you run out of runway. I don't think profit plays a big role.
    - parsimo2010 2y ago
      Profit plays the biggest role, growth is secondary. Another round of funding is only necessary if they aren't profitable enough to sustain themselves on their own. Although, as I think about it, maybe as an AI company nobody ever expected them to ever get to profitability so the only way to continue their existence was through continued funding.
      - pc86 2y ago
        IMO the biggest detriment of VC-backed companies is that they can still get killed when they're profitable because they're just not profitable enough. You found a company and own 100%. You get investment and bring on partners, you set aside 20% for employee shares, etc. All of a sudden there's a dozen owners and nobody owns 50%. You're profitable in the sense that everyone's payroll clears and you're making rent, with money left over, but it's not enough to invest in anything big, and the investors won't put up anything more because your growth has stalled. Every investor who was previously your "partner" will be trying to shut the company down and sell it for parts. VCs don't make their money by having a portfolio of companies throwing off $200k/yr in profit to a dozen different investors.
henning 2y ago
> However, by the time we started to take Fable to market, AI was beginning to challenge the very nature of software itself No it didn't. ChatGPT spitting out snippets of broken shit where you have to tell it exactly what you want and think through the entire architecture yourself is not a challenge to the nature of software. Especially older models that were even worse than the current 2024 ones. Also, AI-generated code is still code. The underlying hardware still works the same.
ratedgene 2y ago
Huh, it's interesting the supposition is that AI tools are the future, therefore they're unable to compete in time especially when they seemed perfectly poised to adopt that strategy. Why wouldn't they use that to sell another round to bridge?
- masto 2y ago
  I was just looking at motion graphics (I guess it's called motion design now) tools yesterday. I have a small YouTube channel and I was noodling around with the idea of making a little intro screen that just does some kind of swishy flooshy thing. I am very good at operating technical software, but I have no graphic design skills, so as much as I am concerned about and skeptical about AI "art", I thought I'd see what's out there. Maybe instead of starting from a template, it could generate an idea that I could finish my own way. To get to the point: I didn't find anything that looked usable. Maybe it's telling that I didn't find Fable/Prism at all. But from what I can make of their site, it seems to be about adding (to my eye, unpleasant and unnecessary) textures, rather than generating new animations. This looked like a nice piece of software with a lot of functionality and a meaningful customer base. It sucks that everything is grow, grow, grow, grow, exit, or die. I've been contemplating starting something, but I don't know if there's any oxygen left for the idea of simply making something people want and selling/operating it at a reasonable profit.
bruce511 2y ago
I found the "why are we closing down" to be somewhat weak. I mean, you're closing down cause you ran out of cash right? But apparently the app is beloved by customers... right? Something about AI (which seems somewhat vague...) Anyway, why not just be honest? We swung for the fences, didn't quite get there, the money is all gone, and no-one wants yo give us more... Frankly as post mortems go, this one is pretty weak.
- karmakaze 2y ago
  I was wondering the same, was it a decision or a realization? I suppose the decision part is to do it now rather than later when it can get messier. I've gone down with a startup ship and it was rather pointless.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
adamc 2y ago
Yet another example of how startups are often a negative for customers.
schnebbau 2y ago
From their terms: > You must be 18 years of age or older and reside in the United States or any of its territories to use the Services In hindsight, excluding 95.3% of the world from using their product may have been a mistake.
- pc86 2y ago
  What's the TAM of people who want a web-app vector graphics and animation tool? It's certainly less than 8 billion.
groby_b 2y ago
How on earth does the "AI! Paradigm change!" noise make any sense as reason for a shutdown?
hiyer 2y ago
I thought it was the reading community app [1], which I use off and on. Never heard of these guys, so nothing to see here for me. 1. https://fable.co/ https://fable.co/
your_challenger 2y ago
What does AI have to do for the shutting down of a motion graphics design app? They focused on the wrong thing, spent too much money and decided to call it quits.

38 points by timmb 2y ago

Do they live happily ever after?

Sad, I’ve been waiting for the “figma of after effects”—one of the few positive (albeit unlikely) potentials around the failed adobe purchase. “However, by the time we started to take Fable to market, AI was beginning to challenge the very nature of software itself, and our multi-modal bet with Prism wasn’t enough to cut through. And while we hold a strong pov on how the next generation of creative workflows should evolve, unfortunately, we don’t have the time to get there.” Failed AI bet?

a1o 2y ago

Has someone reimplemented the flash Editor in some open source project? I know there's a player made in rust.

moralestapia 2y ago

If the founders drop by this thread: * Please open source it! * This is the best conclusion for everybody involved.

franze 2y ago
Open Sourcing is a lot of work. Plus it might contain (even huge) parts that can not be open sourced. And even unknown parts where real ownership and patents might be unknown.
- stonogo 2y ago
  Where did this bizarre myth start? You apache-license the code you wrote, write a paragraph about code isn't yours or you're not sure about and is therefore missing, and move on with your life. Patent indemnification is not your problem, it's the problem of whoever wants to use the code.
  - zeroclicks 2y ago
    Exactly. If the company is winding down anyways, it's hard for things to get worse anyways.
  - moralestapia 2y ago
    Can't agree more. Erlang, FoundationDB, there's plenty of success stories of products who were EOL at some point and open sourcing was the thing that made them explode in popularity. I think Fable is a very-high quality product, it's unfortunate it didn't materialize as a business, but the software has enough quality and popularity to maybe become something like the Blender of that niche; a thing that would be extremely beneficial to any of the founders' future endeavors.

oidar 2y ago

The app is built, why not just let it simmer for awhile. Are the costs of running it greater than the money it brings in?

unshavedyak 2y ago
It's a great reason why webapps suck. A licensed local app would be great here, as the customer wouldn't lose value when Fable disappears. Yet now customers lose all value. Great. So frustrating as a user.
- thewebguyd 2y ago
  Yep. I lament the loss of native, local apps all the time (and the prevalence of "always online" local apps - I've seen LoB apps that were promising, native apps only to find out they won't run offline because the app does a license check online at startup and will refuse to launch without a connection). Everything as SaaS web apps is just yet another chapter in the enshittification of tech.
  - pc86 2y ago
    > I've seen LoB apps that were promising, native apps only to find out they won't run offline because the app does a license check online at startup and will refuse to launch without a connection Isn't this fine as long as this is the only thing it does? "Making sure this has been paid for" seems completely legitimate.
    - thewebguyd 2y ago
      Totally fine and legitimate, the problem comes in situations where you might need to launch without an active internet connection. Arguably this wasn't the best vendor in the world, but IMO there should be a grace period, i.e., must connect at least x times per months instead of at every start up.
- samuelstros 2y ago
  Webapps will work locally soon. Say hello to OPFS https://web.dev/articles/origin-private-file-system https://web.dev/articles/origin-private-file-system. Works surprisingly good, see this demo app https://fink2.onrender.com/ https://fink2.onrender.com/

notpushkin 2y ago

> On November 15, 2024, the Fable product will be shut down. All users will no longer be able to sign up, log in, or access files. All customer data and project files will be permanently deleted [...] > We recommend you look through your Fable files and export your projects off the platform (e.g. to mp4, gif, lottie… etc). I genuinely am at a loss for words here. Somebody sat down and decided that giving you your project sources in some form is too much work, just a GIF export will do. (For those looking to save their data: go for Lottie, it’s a bit more versatile and you can preserve vector data at least.) EDIT: the ideal way to go here would of course be open sourcing the whole thing!

tsimionescu 2y ago
Was Fable using a well-known format, or is it a proprietary format specific to the app ? If it's proprietary, would it make any sense to export it directly? Is it even a file format, or is it possible they were simply storing various pieces of data related to your project in various places in backend DBs?
- sentientslug 2y ago
  Says in the article “the Fable file format is not transferable to other platforms.”
  - webstrand 2y ago
    So export a structured dump of all relevant data and leave it up to someone else to decipher.
    - gus_massa 2y ago
      I agree. I deciphered a few weird formats, for example the raw format of an old camera, the save files of drawings in WinWord 1. It's easier if you can make a few custom small examples, for example in the drawings use only one line, then two, then tree. They were binary formats, so the trick was to use an hex editor and look at them for a long time and make a few guess. I never deciphered them 100%, but I had enough info to read the files I care about and create new files. Sometimes you get a riff format and a big chunk of the guesswork is solved. And most modern formats are just a bunch of xml files inside a tar.gz , so now the first step is to change the extension to .zip and cross your fingers.

SoftTalker 2y ago

It always amazes me how many of these "we're winding down X" stories hit the front page here and I've never heard of X. We really do work in silos, even if it doesn't seem that way.

parsimo2010 2y ago
Or maybe it's that you're well informed and X wasn't well known... When a product shuts down it's usually because it wasn't profitable (or not profitable enough). Either they didn't get enough paying customers or they set their pricing too low. For whatever reason- but there's probably some correlation between a product shutting down and many people not being aware of its existence. Even without being well known, these stories can hit the front page if a few people upvote a post quickly, and then the post gets a few sympathy votes as it rises up the page.
- turnsout 2y ago
  When a VC-backed company shuts down, it's usually because they weren't growing. You can only get to the next round of funding if you're still growing—otherwise you run out of runway. I don't think profit plays a big role.
  - parsimo2010 2y ago
    Profit plays the biggest role, growth is secondary. Another round of funding is only necessary if they aren't profitable enough to sustain themselves on their own. Although, as I think about it, maybe as an AI company nobody ever expected them to ever get to profitability so the only way to continue their existence was through continued funding.
    - pc86 2y ago
      IMO the biggest detriment of VC-backed companies is that they can still get killed when they're profitable because they're just not profitable enough. You found a company and own 100%. You get investment and bring on partners, you set aside 20% for employee shares, etc. All of a sudden there's a dozen owners and nobody owns 50%. You're profitable in the sense that everyone's payroll clears and you're making rent, with money left over, but it's not enough to invest in anything big, and the investors won't put up anything more because your growth has stalled. Every investor who was previously your "partner" will be trying to shut the company down and sell it for parts. VCs don't make their money by having a portfolio of companies throwing off $200k/yr in profit to a dozen different investors.

henning 2y ago

> However, by the time we started to take Fable to market, AI was beginning to challenge the very nature of software itself No it didn't. ChatGPT spitting out snippets of broken shit where you have to tell it exactly what you want and think through the entire architecture yourself is not a challenge to the nature of software. Especially older models that were even worse than the current 2024 ones. Also, AI-generated code is still code. The underlying hardware still works the same.

ratedgene 2y ago

Huh, it's interesting the supposition is that AI tools are the future, therefore they're unable to compete in time especially when they seemed perfectly poised to adopt that strategy. Why wouldn't they use that to sell another round to bridge?

masto 2y ago
I was just looking at motion graphics (I guess it's called motion design now) tools yesterday. I have a small YouTube channel and I was noodling around with the idea of making a little intro screen that just does some kind of swishy flooshy thing. I am very good at operating technical software, but I have no graphic design skills, so as much as I am concerned about and skeptical about AI "art", I thought I'd see what's out there. Maybe instead of starting from a template, it could generate an idea that I could finish my own way. To get to the point: I didn't find anything that looked usable. Maybe it's telling that I didn't find Fable/Prism at all. But from what I can make of their site, it seems to be about adding (to my eye, unpleasant and unnecessary) textures, rather than generating new animations. This looked like a nice piece of software with a lot of functionality and a meaningful customer base. It sucks that everything is grow, grow, grow, grow, exit, or die. I've been contemplating starting something, but I don't know if there's any oxygen left for the idea of simply making something people want and selling/operating it at a reasonable profit.

bruce511 2y ago

I found the "why are we closing down" to be somewhat weak. I mean, you're closing down cause you ran out of cash right? But apparently the app is beloved by customers... right? Something about AI (which seems somewhat vague...) Anyway, why not just be honest? We swung for the fences, didn't quite get there, the money is all gone, and no-one wants yo give us more... Frankly as post mortems go, this one is pretty weak.

karmakaze 2y ago
I was wondering the same, was it a decision or a realization? I suppose the decision part is to do it now rather than later when it can get messier. I've gone down with a startup ship and it was rather pointless.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

adamc 2y ago

Yet another example of how startups are often a negative for customers.

schnebbau 2y ago

From their terms: > You must be 18 years of age or older and reside in the United States or any of its territories to use the Services In hindsight, excluding 95.3% of the world from using their product may have been a mistake.

pc86 2y ago
What's the TAM of people who want a web-app vector graphics and animation tool? It's certainly less than 8 billion.

groby_b 2y ago

How on earth does the "AI! Paradigm change!" noise make any sense as reason for a shutdown?

hiyer 2y ago

I thought it was the reading community app [1], which I use off and on. Never heard of these guys, so nothing to see here for me. 1. https://fable.co/ https://fable.co/

your_challenger 2y ago

What does AI have to do for the shutting down of a motion graphics design app? They focused on the wrong thing, spent too much money and decided to call it quits.