Maccast Members 2011.09.02 - Hacking iOS Files
Links
V Intro
* Ken sent me an email about losing his Angry Birds Game data because his child removed the app from his iPad which also takes the data with it.
V If you have iTunes set to backup data automatically when you connect the device this might be a problem.
* If you connect the device, stop the backup immediately.
V Then you should be able to restore your device from the last backup
* Right-click (or Control-click) the device, and choose Restore from Backup.
* The problem with this is if you have new data (contacts, photos, calendar events, etc) and those haven't been sync'd then you'll lose that data.
V Manually restoring just Angry Birds Data
* 1) First, do not re-download the app or connect it yet. You need to extract the data from your last back-up and if you sync that data would likely be wiped out.
* 2) Get a copy of iPhone Backup Extractor
* 3) Launch iPhone Backup Extractor. Click the 'Read Backups' button and locate your last iPhone Backup. Click Choose. Now in the Application list find the 'com.clickgamer.AngryBirds' enter, select it, and choose 'Extract'. Save it someplace easy to find like the desktop.
* 4) Now connect your iPad top your Mac and let it sync and put Angry Birds back on the iPad. There is a chance that the data will restore. If not, continue.
* 5) Assuming your data doest get restored, get a copy of iPhone Explorer
* 6) With your iPad still connected, launch iPhone Explorer. Expand the iPad and Apps section and scroll down and find Angry Birds in the list. Expand the Angry Birds entry and inside it there should be a 'Documents' folder. Expand the documents folder.
* 7) Now go to where you have your Angry Birds backup extracted in step 3. Look in it, in it's 'Documents' folder and find the 'highscores.lua' file. Drag that file from the 'Documents' folder in the Finder on to the 'Documents' folder in Angry Birds in the iPhone Explorer software. This should copy the file back on to your device.
* 8) Disconnect the iPad and launch Angry Birds (if it was running in the background you'll need to quit and relaunch). Your progress and high scores should be restored.
V Data from the Device
* iPhone Explorer (free)
* PhoneView ($)
V Data from Backups
* iPhone Backup Extractor from supercrazyawesome.com
V What to do with it
V Back it up and restore it. Both iPhone Explorer and PhoneView let you do this
* Be extremely careful in writing data directly back to the device. You can break you apps or worse the OS
* Should always be able to restore your device from your backups.
V View and extract data
* Base from Menial to look at .sqllite,.sql,.db files and extract data
* SQLite Browser (free)
V Amazing amounts of data when you look around
* Photos and Recordings, not iTunes music or videos
* Home screen wall paper
* Voicemail recordings, notes data, address book data
V 3rd party app data.
* Images, audio files, icons, etc.
* Comics had image panels for comic books.