
Fabric – Mobile developer platform by Twitter - lalwanivikas
https://dev.twitter.com/products/fabric
======
untog
Kind of underwhelmed after reading the Wired article:

[http://www.wired.com/2014/10/twitter-fabric-
sdk/](http://www.wired.com/2014/10/twitter-fabric-sdk/)

It's... fine. But given Twitter's history of dev antagonism I am not about to
create apps that rely on them as a backend. Sorry.

~~~
catkin
I think a lot of people are in the same boat. Would I use this after seeing
how Twitter have treated people using their API in the past? No way.

~~~
rhizome
Without the kinds of explicit committments in licensing or API access that no
board of directors would ever go for, I have to think they're sowing the seeds
for a round of acquisitions.

------
skrebbel
From reading the front page, I have absolutely no idea what this is. A cross-
compiler? A build tool? Some pre-package presets?

In what language will I code? Can I reuse code across platforms? Is all this
trouble _Solved._ when I use Fabric?

~~~
enos_feedler
Somewhere buried deep in this "experience" is a way to add twitter sign in to
my iOS app. Can you just give me a link to the darn framework so I can
download it and drag it into my XCode project like EVERY OTHER FRAMEWORK I
EVER USE HAS? Why must I install some toolbar client and inject some script
into my Xcode build process. Somehow these things are talking to each other.
It got me into this state where it broke my iOS app build. And now im stuck.

~~~
rentnorove
I share your frustration. All it does it install a framework in the root of
the project, then add a build script that calls `<executable> <some ID> <some
other ID>`. Boths IDs are available on the website, so you can set up
crashlytics without using their stupid toolbar.

The framework's available here as a cocoapod:
[http://cocoapods.org/?q=crashlytics](http://cocoapods.org/?q=crashlytics)

------
adamfeldman
Twitter's blog post on Fabric is much clearer than the linked page:
[https://blog.twitter.com/2014/introducing-
fabric](https://blog.twitter.com/2014/introducing-fabric).

Fabric seems to be a brand under which Twitter offers modular 'kits', or SDKs
for two of its major acquisitions (Crashlytics, MoPub) and the Sign-in with
Twitter product. It's unclear if this is a new wrapper around existing
SDKs/APIs, or a new, simplified SDK/API for these products.

~~~
berdon
This.

I received an invite and installed it. The plugin is Crashlytics + Twitter and
MoPub integration.

------
kolanos
I'm sure Fabric ([http://www.fabfile.org/](http://www.fabfile.org/)) will be
none too pleased about this name choice.

~~~
aarondf
And Fabric.js!

[http://fabricjs.com/](http://fabricjs.com/)

~~~
morgo
And MySQL Fabric: [http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql-
utilities/1.4/en/fabric.html](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql-
utilities/1.4/en/fabric.html)

~~~
than
And Jo-Ann Fabric: [http://www.joann.com](http://www.joann.com)

~~~
jastanton
And actual fabric: [http://cbsphilly.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/shopping-
style-...](http://cbsphilly.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/shopping-style-fabric-
stores-rolls-of-fabric.jpg)

~~~
mchristoff
And Fabric the night club:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabric_(club)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabric_\(club\))

~~~
enos_feedler
Also, lets not forget Fabric Engine
([http://fabricengine.com/](http://fabricengine.com/))

~~~
avighnay
VMWare vFabric too (but discontinued last month) -
[http://www.vmware.com/products/vfabric/overview](http://www.vmware.com/products/vfabric/overview)

------
Newky
Poor naming of this. What about popular python library and command line
application ([http://www.fabfile.org/](http://www.fabfile.org/))

------
0x0
It's hard to forget how Twitter treated 3rd party client developers with their
surprise 100k max users limit per app.

------
robinhowlett
I met the executive driving this project earlier this year. He explained to me
that Twitter only cares about one metric: growth.

In particular they are hyper-focused on signing up new Twitter users and then
"on-boarding" them so that they can follow other users, posts tweets etc.
within the first session. That means that products using the Twitter platform
need to be focused on that too.

Twitter wanted to position themselves around three core features:

* the feed itself * the platform (recent third-party hooks/features such as voting (World Cup) and payments (Stripe et al) are part of this) * developer tools

It was explained to me that the latter was needed because too often Twitter
felt that social/twitter features were "bolted on" too often at the end of
projects, meaning that the integration was naturally segregated from the other
features.

Twitter felt that for developers to create products that were inherently
social, they would need to provide the tools to build those products
themselves, and that social integration would be encouraged early in the
product development cycle.

Fabric appears to be the first output of this strategy.

~~~
LiweiZ
Upvoted and thanks for your input.

------
incision
I find this choice of name particularly egregious. It's not just the existence
of current projects [1] and common use in technology prior [2], but the
source.

Twitter, being Twitter could call this whatever they wanted.

"Yolk" or whatever would make just as many front pages.

I don't see how "Fabric" can do anything but serve someone inside Twitter who
likes the name while being inconvenient / irrelevant to everyone else.

1: [http://www.fabfile.org/](http://www.fabfile.org/)

2:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_fabric](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_fabric)

~~~
joelrunyon
How do you think these types of things should be resolved?

~~~
rstupek
I believe trial by combat is the only reasonable option

~~~
gojomo
SEO combat.

------
pbnjay
WTF. I click the link "Get started with fabric" and start the signup process,
and then it says "we'll be in touch" like this was a beta invite-only thing?
Seriously false advertising. I doubt I'll look at it, even if I ever do get
confirmed now.

I'm sure little old me doesn't matter to them in the grand scheme of things,
but I absolutely hate crap like this. Tricking me into registering by
pretending to have a product I can try immediately is just plain stupid. I
lose all respect for projects that do this as a first impression.

~~~
tylerlh
Agreed. It was pretty disappointing to sign up on a "Try it now" form and then
be told I'm on a waiting list without mentioning that before. Was looking
forward to trying the Crashlytics Beta offering, but I suppose I'll look
elsewhere for beta distribution.

------
jarsin
When I saw the name I was expecting a full mobile app framework like ionic or
something that combines ui with build tools like cordova.

Looks just like a collection of backend services that you can include in your
apps today without this framework if you really wanted them.

Hopefully more info will be released because I am not seeing anything here..

~~~
venomsnake
Same here - what I understood is this is "login with twitter"

------
lnanek2
Wonder if sign in tokens are still limited. There are so many horror stories
about popular hitting the user limit and being unable to grow any more. Don't
really trust Twitter enough to invest the time to read to find out after
they've auto-banned some of my games for being able to Tweet scores and "being
too much like a Twitter client".

------
fit2rule
This is all quite confusing. I decided to try it out: so I downloaded
Fabric.app (OSX), and signed up for a trial account. Somehow I was put in a
pre-existing group when I signed up, with 8 other members whose email address
I didn't recognize. Then, when I fired up Fabric.app, it goes into the menu
bar and sits there. Does nothing. Asks me to select an XCode project (only
lists my existing XCode projects) and doesn't really go further until I login.
That's _very_ unfriendly so I decided to quit until I learn more about it -
oh, there's no quit option in the menu. Seems like Fabric.app has installed
itself and wants to sit there .. forever .. doing .. something? I see no need
for that in an developer platform, so 'kill `pidof Fabric`' it is, for me ..
until I at least RTFM and find out what all the fuss is about.

Bad Aji!

~~~
growthhack
Hey there! Hmm seems strange -- I'm from the Fabric team and I'd love to chat
more about this. Mind dropping me a note at support@fabric.io? Thanks :-)

------
pavlov
Seems like it's a collection of independent SDKs for iOS and Android. Some of
the back-end services that you can use with these SDKs are new, such as
"Digits".

For Android, they also have an IDE plugin for configuring the libraries, which
is nice... But does not quite make this a "platform" IMO.

------
nbevans
"Our passion is building tools that make developers’ lives easier."

Is it? I thought it was distributing 140 character messages in an eventually
consistent manner.

------
wldlyinaccurate
I've read the whole page and I genuinely can't tell what this product is. Is
it like PhoneGap - develop once, deploy to multiple targets?

------
verst
Watch the live stream at dev.twitter.com/flightlive.

@CharlesMerriam2 - more info will be published after the presentations
happening right now.

------
pbreit
I thought this was going to be more like Parse or Angular/Ionic but it's not
even close. I can't envision a single usage scenario even remotely similar to
the high level description.

------
bmnick
This actually really bugs me as a Crashlytics user. I'd much rather they stop
trying to bundle it themselves and just list these so they can be used by the
already established package management out there - Gradle/Maven and Cocoapods.
Having to install an IDE plugin just to get a library feels like the dark
ages.

~~~
colbyh
Releasing libraries tied to IDEs sound like an absolute nightmare to have to
maintain over time. Package managers exist for exactly this reason - I have no
idea how anyone at Twitter could have ever thought this was a good idea.

------
CharlesMerriam2
So this is unrelated to the Fabric tools for managing devices? There is zero
information on the website before asking to agree to rather long legal
agreement and give you permission to spam my email. You have an opportunity to
improve your on-boarding.

------
lfx
So.. It will be like Cordova/PhoneGap/Ionic? It is so unclear from that page.

------
aubreyjohnson
Curious why you need a menubar install for 3 dependencies. Really?...

Parse gets it, has an awesome cocoapod.

Also does anyone know if you use their Digits login solution if you get the
phone number or do they store it? Couldn't tell from the docs.

------
mesozoic
Are there really so few words that have no real point or relation to a product
that new ones can't pick a different word from old ones.

[http://www.fabfile.org/](http://www.fabfile.org/)

~~~
serve_yay
That logic applies to this too, unless it was the first thing called Fabric.

~~~
Ensorceled
It only applies if you can list some previous _technology_ projects called
Fabric.

------
wil421
Sign up page not working in Chrome on OS X - Yosemite. Works in Safari/FF.

------
general_failure
I couldn't make any sense of the landing page. What exactly is this?

------
prlambert
"Our passion is building tools that make developers’ lives easier." Who is
"Our" referring to?? Since when did Twitter become Atlassian?

~~~
spullara
That was probably said by the head of the Crashlytics team at Twitter.

------
lprez
so, will this be the mobile equivalent to bootstrap?

~~~
frewsxcv
AFAIK, this is just an attempt to put Twitter products in mobile apps. Nothing
revolutionary here

~~~
drivingmenuts
So they can arbitrarily screw them over later?

~~~
ricardonunez
It was my initial thought, but this is a little different. It's to use in an
existing app and not building an app for twitter. At least that's what I got.

------
notastartup
Yet you still need a Mac to make iPhone apps.

