10.8.x Contact Server Doesn't Push to iOS

It is not supported on the iOS side.

If you go to Settings on the iOS device and look at the advanced settings for Push you will see that iOS Contacts (unlike other apps) only supports up to Fetch.

Yar.... well there is Apple marketing info, Apple technical documentation (what there is of it 😢) and there is reality... 這可能是不同 !

This is what I can tell you as a fact as I have it all working 🙂 — OS X Server 2.2 on OS X 10.8.2, iOS 6.1, OS X client machine running 10.8.2.

1. On iOS when you look at the Calendar account setup one will see "CalDAV Account Information" as a heading. When one looks at the Contacts account setup there is no "CardDAV Account Information".
2. What Apple doesn't say (make completely clear) in it's glossy literature is that for the 'shared' calendar & contacts services it's not shared as in user A makes their calendar/contacts available to user B or a group. You need to make a pseudo network account (I call mine DAV Service Agent) and then use that account as the account for all clients (on OS X or iOS) applications (Calendar & Contacts). Then you have 'shared' Calendars & Contacts as in shared because everyone uses the same account!
3. I have my Apple Push Certificates installed and they look to be cleanly setup
4. If I have two clients (iPad with iOS 6.1 and Mac with OS X 10.8.2) and I have a contact open on the iPad and I change that contact on the Mac (the account/contact is obviously on my OS X server) within a second I see network activity on the iPad (spinning wheel) and the contact on the iPad is updated. Now this is even though on the iPad in:
   Settings | Mail, Contacts, Calendars | Fetch New Data = Push | Advanced | Contacts = Fetch
5. If I make a change to contact on the iPad it takes 1 - 3 minutes to see the change on the Mac.

Bottom line... as far as I am concerned I get push to the iOS device, regardless of what it says in the settings.

Is the OS X server implementation a beautiful setup... hmmm.

Same problem here. Our Mavericks server pushes updates for all services except contacts. The iOS devices receive push updates without any problems from exchange servers in our company - so in general, this is possible. I am using the same account for contacts and calender on the server and as calender is working seamlessly, authentication should also not be the problem. And of course, Apple issued a push certificate for contacts to my server like for all the other services. I would really appreciate any ideas how to solve this!