For a month or two, I have held both Apollo and Silverlight at arms length waiting for the dust and hype to settle a bit before investigating these offerings from Adobe and Microsoft. Now that I have a little time (between projects), I will attempt to install both and describe my experience here in a 2-part article. Part 1 (this part) will describe my Apollo installation experience and part 2 will document my Silverlight experience. Not exactly ‘Apollo vs. Silverlight’, but I suppose if you read the 2 posts back-to-back it might have that effect.

I realize that neither platform is fully baked yet, so I will focus primarily on the installation process and initial impressions, rather than available features and bugs. Also, there are plenty of folks out there stating their positions for and against Apollo and Silverlight, so I’ll leave that argument alone for now.

When the Apollo alpha was first released back in March, I attempted to do a ‘quick install’, but was unsuccessful. A ‘quick install’, as the name suggests, is an attempt to install software (or anything else) with only minimal effort and without reading instructions. You might argue that this is a flawed approach – if all else fails, read the instructions (or RTFM) – but I believe it’s an excellent measure of initial usability that can ultimately impact the success/failure of a product. “Don’t make me think!”, as Steve Krug would say. After all, here it is two months later and I am just now coming back to RTFM and figure out why my first attempt failed.

Apollo Installation – Ok, here we go (again):

1. I will start by navigating to the Apollo page on Adobe Labs where I find the ‘Getting Started’ tab and instructions to ‘Run Apollo Applications’ (I am running Firefox 2.0.0.3, btw).

2. I am instructed to download the Apollo runtime, so I click on that link which takes me to a dedicated download page (away from the rest of the ‘getting started’ instructions).

3. I am now required to check the ‘I have read and agree to the terms…’ box, which I do. BTW, section 3.1 under ‘Restrictions’ in the EULA is pretty interesting. It specifically prohibits installing the runtime on any non-PC device. This could suggest that Adobe is considering a player/runtime licensing model for devices (similar to Flash Lite).

4. I can now select the appropriate download link for my OS (Windows) which opens a dialog window with the option to ‘Save File’. Clicking this downloads a Windows installer file (apollo_win_alpha1_031907.msi).

5. I find the downloaded file and double-click on it. A dialog window pops up that says ‘Adobe Apollo 1.0 Alpha 1′ is installing… But before this process completes, a second dialog pops up that alerts me that ‘A network error occurred while attempting to read from the file:’ followed by the path to the file. I hit ‘Ok’ on the alert which closes both dialogs. I am going to ASSUME that the installation failed and try again. Same result. In fact, now that I think about it, this is the same problem I had when I first attempted to install Apollo back in March.

6. I wonder what the problem might be. I have deleted the original installer and checked in the Task Manager to see if there might be an existing Apollo process – doesn’t appear to be, so I will download the installer again and give it another go. Argh! No luck!

7. I notice that the network error message refers to an installer file name slightly different from the one I downloaded – ‘apollo_win_alpha1_031907(2).msi’ instead of ‘apollo_win_alpha1_031907.msi’. So, I changed the name of the local installer file – added ‘(2)’ – and whaddayaknow! “Installation was successful.” I should clarify here that all of the installer files that I’d previously downloaded had been deleted from my system before attempting to install Apollo (today). So, it is odd that the installer would look for the ‘(2)’ version (which would result from downloading the file twice to the same directory).

8. Great, now I will attempt to check out some of the ‘Sample Applications’. Clicking the link takes me to a page with a few examples to download along with their source code. I’ll try ‘Pixel Perfect’ (it’s my personal motto)… Clicking the link pops up the standard ‘Opening’ dialog with the option for ‘Open with’ defaulting to ‘Apollo. Application Installer’. Clicking ‘Ok’ opens an ‘Application Install’ dialog with several warnings about ‘unverified publisher’ and ‘unrestricted system access’. I ‘trust’ the source, so I click ‘Install’. I am presented with standard ‘add shortcut’ options, though surprisingly, ‘Installation Location’ is fixed. I click ‘Continue’ and choose to run the app on ‘Finish’. Aha! Success!

Ok, I can’t say that installing Apollo was completely painless given the difficulty I had with the file name bug, and some of the nits I picked above, but it worked out eventually.

For my next trick, I will attempt to install Silverlight. Wish me luck!