OS X Mountain Lion Server For Dummies

Clients for Contacts Server

Apple’s Mac and iOS devices have built-in support for Mountain Lion’s Contacts Server, which uses an open standard, CardDAV, to communicate. Like CalDAV for Calendar Server, CardDAV is based on WebDAV and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), both used on the web. Because these are open standards, client software for Windows can connect to Contacts Server.

Mac, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch support

Mac OS X 10.6 and later come with several applications that support CardDAV and work with contacts service:

Address Book in Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard, and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

Contacts in Mountain Lion

Mail in Snow Leopard and later

iChat in Snow Leopard and Lion

Messages in Mountain Lion

For iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch devices running iOS 4.0 and later, the Contacts app can display and add contacts located in Contacts Server.

Windows clients for contacts service

CardDAV Windows clients that support Contacts Server are not common but can be found. Here are two solutions: ...