Why are you comparing Apollo to desktop widgets? Apollo is intended to build rich client applications, not just dashboard widgets. And the Microsoft technologies to compare it with are surely Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX Extensions and WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere). Further, you suggest that Microsoft limits UI design. Flex/Apollo are similar, with standard UI controls. This is hardly the case now with WPF based interfaces in Vista, with funky UI designs built in the Expression products. I feel this article missed out discussion of some key new technologies.

integrates with web services? Writes directly to hard disk? Terrific.