[Infowarrior] - PGP.Com Sucks (OSX support)

[Richard Forno]

Snow Leopard comes out for OSX users today. OSX 10.6.  Hurray!

While watching the Redskins-Patriots on the big screen, I go about  
trying to upgrade my test laptop only to discover the Apple DVD is not  
recognizing the hard drive as something that can support OSX.  WTFO?    
Resourceful as ever, I begin to Google for answers.

As I Google, an email[1] arrives from PGP.COM saying that their  
current product is incompatible with 10.6 and if users want to use PGP  
they should not upgrade but that if we "intend to upgrade to Snow  
Leopard, you must decrypt all PGP encrypted drives and uninstall PGP  
Desktop before upgrading the system to Mac OS X 10.6."   They go on to  
say that 10.6 support is forthcoming in their next major release but  
offer no details on when it will be, except to say they're accepting  
beta applications now.

*blink*

Taking beta applications now? There are freeware and shareware  
developers whose products are fully compatible with 10.6 and PGP only  
now is soliciting beta testers?  Did the company just realize that OSX  
10.6 was coming out today?  Didn't they get the memo?  Are there no  
OSX users at PGP Headquarters?

So back to my stalled Snow Leopard upgrade on my laptop:  Thanks to  
Google's timely archiving of the Apple support boards[2]  I found out  
that not only did I have to uninstall PGP, repair disk permissions,  
and reboot (which still didn't fix the problem), but since PGP  
apparently does something to the OSX partition table, I had to enter  
Disk Utility and dynamically resize my laptop's hard drive a few  
megabytes in size just so a new partition table could be written ---  
at which point I was able to install OSX 10.6 just fine. (Note that I  
had installed, but did not use, PGP on this computer, and certainly  
did not use their Whole Disk Encryption.)  What kind of stuff did PGP  
have to write to my partition table to make it unreadable by Apple's  
own installation disk?

Unfortunately, after many years of dealing with their quirky product  
registration system and hiccups with routine OS upgrades, tonight's  
news has forced to say that PGP has lost me as a customer --- their  
annoying corporate quirks aside, I cannot trust any security product  
that tweaks (nay, borks) my system in such a troublesome manner and  
certainly one that seems to treat Mac users as third-class citizens. 
[3]  I'm not the only one who feels this way, either -- indeed they  
are correct in titling their concerns the Audacity of Hopelessness. 
[4]   Accordingly, I will follow the lead of my coworkers and other  
securitygeek friends and embrace GPG for my encryption needs.

Alas, PGP, I bid thee a sad adieu.

-rick

[1] http://blog.pgp.com/index.php/2009/08/sneak-peek-pgp-whole-disk-encryption-for-snow-leopard/

[2] http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10063151

[3] How about their officially-unsupported but unofficially-supported  
Mail.App plug-in?  After nearly a decade of OSX in the marketplace  
they still don't officially support Apple's Mail program?

[4] http://pgpsucks.wordpress.com/
.