To be fair, labs silently nerf models all the time.
Fable's probably objectively better at full power. I mean, I definitely felt the same difference in competency between Fable and current Opus. But Opus itself has definitely been nerfed, and Fable, even if it comes back the public forever (probably won't), will get nerfed.
That was before SaaS became a thing. Products didn't degrade over time because they couldn't easily reach out to your machine and remotely overwrite bytes on the CD-ROM the product came on.
Fable's probably objectively better at full power. I mean, I definitely felt the same difference in competency between Fable and current Opus. But Opus itself has definitely been nerfed, and Fable, even if it comes back the public forever (probably won't), will get nerfed.