Intous4 PTK-640 no longer supported on Mac??

Sooooo… a Mac Tech since 1997 and I just finally had to upgrade from my 2012 iMac and bit the bullet on an M3Max MacBook Pro 16", and it has been the most difficult upgrade I have ever done, and I have a lot of clients who upgrade every few years and 3 kids and a wife who all have their own Macs and I do this somewhat regularly so it's something I'm very accustomed to.

My 3 biggest hurdles were finding the right Docking Station for my needs, the CalDigit T4 is excellent in many ways but it lacks Thunderbolt ports so I looked around and bought a Mini Dock with DP ports to connect my 20" Cinema Display and 24" Cinema Display HD because that's the superior connection type for quality video. That didn't have enough juice to power my displays so I did a little digging and found that I'd need USB-C/Thunderbolt adapters in order to get my screens enough juice to power on, so I sent it back and got a different mini docking station and that worked. HOWEVER, not enough juice to the USB ports on the monitor via USB-A so I had to use a USB to USB-C adapter and it solved that issue.

Then my 30+ years of Postscript fonts (I started working in Prepress and Print Shops in the 90's so I have a metric ton of fonts, more than almost anyone on the planet, but I cannot use them in Sonoma 14.5 unless I convert them to OTF format, and that proved challenging! The best and most inexpensive solution is FontConverter in the App Store, but it wouldn't allow me to purchase it (It's advertised as totally Free, but you can't do a thing unless you pay $24.99 to buy it) for some odd reason, so I had to call apple this afternoon to have them clear out whatever issue my account had and it worked! Now I can convert fonts at will so that's solved.

FINALLY… my last issue… I have 2 Intuos 4 Pro tablets that would not work no matter what I tried and Wacom's solution is for their software to TELL YOU the tablet you're using is no longer supported and you'll need to purchase a new one. I also had an Intuos 5 Touch put away and I tried that one and got the same nonsense, so I modified my search and came upon a Reddit thread reporting the same thing. On there someone suggested they try OpenTabletDriver (Open Source & FREE), so I searched it up, went to their website and downloaded the installer. Upon running the installer I entered the password but it then directed me to System preferences with a message populated right in front telling me that in order for it to function properly I need to "Allow the application to Monitor Input from your keyboard even while using other applications."

And wouldn't you know it??!?!?!??… THE WACOM DRIVER IS THERE BUT THAT OPTION IS TURNED OFF!!!

I turned it on just to see if by some miracle that was the issue and UREKA!!! It immediately recognized my tablet with full functionality! I didn't finish installing OpenTabletDriver so all I had to do was allow the Wacom Driver to Monitor Input.

This tells me that Wacom is simply being Opportunistic & Greedy and they only want your money. Since this all started last night, I went online to explore other options and boy was I surprised by the plethora of other brands producing stellar looking tablets, that on the surface seem to do exactly what Wacom's tablets can and then some, for ¼ of the price. Yeah, Wacom has ensured they never get another penny from me!!!!

Now to find a brand that produces Flex Nibs!!!

I sincerely hope this helps the community.

Just confirming that the Intuous PTK-640 was working on my M1 MacBook Air and it still works on my 2024 M3 MacBook Air (Sonoma OS). Unfortunately I don't remember how I set it up, but it involved installing a driver that appears in Systems Settings as "Wacom Tablet." When I transferred to the new Mac, I needed to go to Privacy & Security -> Input Monitoring and "Allow the Applications ... to monitor Input" (there is a Wacomtabletdriver and a Wacomtouchdriver there, I allowed both, but not sure if both are needed). This partially froze my computer, but when I restarted the tablet works (e.g. the settings for it are adjustable).

Wacom's driver website says the PTK-640 runs Driver 6.3.41-2 (macOS 10.13 - 11) as the latest version. Seems like you have two options:

1. Upgrade to a newer Wacom device that can run the macOS Driver 6.4.6-3 (macOS 11 - 14);
2. Try to install Driver 6.4.6-3 and hope that it isn't too incompatible with the PTK-640 (obviously not recommended - but maybe that's what worked for Steve7575 in an earlier post);

Anyone can check on their for drivers for their specific Wacom model: https://www.wacom.com/en-us/support/product-support/drivers

Did you find the way to make it work? I plugged my old Intuos4 and it's not supported any by MacOS

since you migrated it imported your settings and this, it continued to work, However, if you were to run a full installer, it installs all pertinent software perfectly fine, but it is set to automatically disable input monitoring for the tablet specifically so that if you troubleshoot it, your system will not detect a “compatible” device and it will then literally tell you time to buy a new tablet and kicks out a link to their website.

All you have to do is enable input monitoring, and like magic, your tablet will function perfectly fine across ALL software!

[Edited by Moderator]

the incubus wrote:

[Edited by Moderator]

In answer to your question which has been removed, the moderators are editing & removing your posts because they are in breach of the forum's Terms & Conditions which the Apple e-mail you received should have provided a link to those Terms which you agreed to when you first began posting here.

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I've been seeing a lot of users reporting issues with recent versions of macOS and Wacom tablets, especially on Apple Silicon Macs....even for current models of their tablets.

Edit what? Do you have to use a separate device for editing? Why not edit directly on the Mac?

If you require something that has the Waycom's abilities (doing screen drawing for instance), you need to invest in something else if Intous doesn't met your needs.

All tech eventually reaches end of life, or maybe end of practical life, and the fix is to get different gear. You can't avoid that now days.