OSX CAC Card Support (Oberthur Issued cards)

waydewalker wrote:
Is Apple working on fixing this

I too purchased PKard and it worked just fine with Safari 5.0.xxxx but I upgraded to 5.1 and when I try to access a PKI enabled site Safari crashes to the desktop. I contacted Thursby about this, had to use eamil, and did receive a reply but it was less than encouraging. That response pointed to an issue btw PKard and Safari 5.1 and suggested either a regression to 5.05 or 5.0.6 or trying to use Chrome. I purchased PKard becaue it worked with Safari. I try to avoid all things Google so Chrome is not an option. I'm browsing the discussion looking for a helpful idea.

I had no issues with my CAC card reader in 10.6. Worked straight out of the box, no additional software, just plug and play. However, I recently upgraded to 10.7 (Lion) and I'm dead in the water. I've been to the militarycac.com site and understand that Apple dropped support for this, but don't understand why.

I sincerely hope Apple renews support for this, as its pretty important for those of us in uniform.

V/R

Steve

Apple has scaled back their enterprise support in many areas. This thread is pretty old and I think Thursby now supports Lion.

Thursby's PKard is supposed to offer Lion support but if you go to their forum you will see this has not become an actuality for most MAC users. I will give it to Thursby, they are doing their best but the root cause of the problem, as mentioned on MilitaryCac.com, is that the Snow Leopard OS handled CAC/PKI well but Lion does not. There are some success stories out there but they are relatively few compared to frustrated users. With the current push of organiztions, both in the private and government sectors, going to MAC platforms, you would think that Apple would take an interest in this and would have ensured that Lion kept the same capabilities in this area that Snow Leopard had but I guess it's just not a big enough issue right now. Fortunately, I have an older MBP with Snow Leopard that I can use to access my organization's CAC-OWA site but would really like to be able to use the newer MBP with OS Lion.

Woody

@woodhousem,

Reading a forum is a lot like listening to support calls -- all you find are the people reporting problems. PKard for Mac is actually pain-free for most people, and we've received an unexpected number of emails thanking us for a simple product that just works. Yes, some people do have troubles, but our support staff is committed to getting the product working. And if we can't get things working, we'll process a refund.

Sincerely,

Carl Ketterling

Director Customer Support

Thursby Software Systems, Inc.

Carl,

I agree with your comments 100% and, as I stated, I'm pleased with the support I have received from Thursby and their support overall with this issue. I am hopeful that your tech support people can help me out on Friday when I will have more time to devote to this issue. My frustration is more with the Lion OS, which has caused a host of problems, from what I can gather from the reviews and forum comments. I'm not used to having problems with our MACs as opposed to PCs where it seems every iteration of the Window's OS comes with problems in terms of not being compatible with existing hardware and software. In looking at this and other forums, it appears that Lion is the real culprit and not Pkard. So, once again, do understand that I never had any problems with Thursby but was just surprised that Apple, which normally does a great job at doing things right, was not more thoughtful in maintaining CAC capability in Lion like it was with Snow Leopard.

Woody

To be thorough, Woody did contact our support staff and was able to get this issue resolved.