[Tweetdeck][tweetdeck] seems to be the path of least resistance for a desktop
[Twitter][twitter] client on Mac OS X 10.4 (there are other free Mac desktop
clients, [Nambu][nambu] and [Tweetie][tweetie] but unfortunately they both
require 10.5).
But Tweetdeck requires the [Adobe AIR runtime][air]. And the Adobe AIR 1.5
installer takes Adobe’s favourite approach of ignoring Mac OS X’s package
installer format in favour of a custom installer application.
When you open the installer, it takes a few seconds and then gives you a
license agreement. Here’s an excerpt:
> 2.3 Distribution. This license does not grant you the right to sublicense
> or distribute the Software. For information about obtaining the right to
> distribute the Software on tangible media or through an internal network or
> with your product or service please refer to…
I read that as explicitly banning any efforts to create a package
to ease the pain of deploying AIR across a bunch of Macs. Damn it.
Clicking Accept moves you to the installation proper, and Adobe loses a few
more points by immediately throwing up an authentication dialog box. Why does
this dialog appear? What am I about to install? If only this was a package
installer I could have looked at the installation manifest to get an idea of
what was going to happen *before* granting the installer free rein to my
computer.
Turns out that everything you care about is installed in `/Library/Frameworks/Adobe AIR.framework` and `/Applications/Utilities/Adobe AIR Application Installer.app` and `/Applications/Utilities/Adobe AIR Uninstaller.app`. For some reason the installer also touches a couple of files in `/Users/Shared/Library/Application Support/Adobe/AIR/Updater` and slips a couple utility apps in your `Library` somewhere. You can ignore those.
It feels particularly wrong when non-system applications put things in the `Utilities` folder – it is effectively a special system directory, and its contents are tools for tinkering with the system configuration or for diagnostics. Adobe Creative Suite 3 likes to create a folder `Adobe Installers` in there *and* `Adobe Utilities`, just in case you haven’t worked out how much you need their software on your computer.
Heaven is almost certainly running System 6.0.8. Nothing is installed without [Font DA Mover][fontdamover].
[air]: http://www.adobe.com/products/air/
[tweetdeck]: http://www.tweetdeck.com/
[nambu]: http://nambu.com/
[tweetie]: http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/
[twitter]: http://twitter.com/
[fontdamover]: http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English-North_American/Macintosh/System/Older_System/System_6.0.x/TrueType/