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Turning off parental restrictions on the iPhone when you’ve forgotten the PIN

June 14, 2013 in Programming | Permalink

FOLLOWUP:

I followed these instructions, but alas, they do not work under iOS 6.1.3. I got an OK restore, but still couldn’t unlock Parental Restrictions. I used iExplorer to backup all my text messages and voicemails, and did a “set up as new device” to get a known passcode on Parental Restrictions again.

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, a real pain. Fortunately the nice folks at iphonebackupextractor.com had the steps lined out; I just needed to do a little command-line tinkering to make it work. So here’s the rundown:

  1. Turn off the password protection of your backups. (If you’ve forgotten this one too you may be stuck.)
  2. Take a backup via iTunes.
  3. Open Terminal.
    1. cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backups
    2. ls -lart
    3. cd (the latest one, which will be the last one listed)
    4. cp 662bc19b13aecef58a7e855d0316e4cf61e2642b ~
    5. openssl sha1 662bc19b13aecef58a7e855d0316e4cf61e2642b
    6. Copy the resulting SHA1 for later.
    7. plutil -convert xml1 662bc19b13aecef58a7e855d0316e4cf61e2642b
    8. Using the editor of your choice, look for “SBParentalControlsEnabled” and make sure the value below it is “true”. If it isn’t, you won’t be able to do the rest of this.
    9. Add these two lines right below “true”:

      <key> SBParentalControlsPIN</key>
      <string>1234</string>

    10. Save.
    11. openssl sha1 662bc19b13aecef58a7e855d0316e4cf61e2642b
    12. Record this new SHA1.
    13. cp Manifest.mbdb ~
    14. Open Manifest.mbdb with a hex editor. I used Hex Fiend.
    15. Find the first SHA1 you saved.
    16. Replace it with the second one. This is quite easy with Hex Fiend, as the “Find…” operation lets you cut and paste the hex strings directly into the find-and-replace boxes.
    17. Save.
  4. Go back to iTunes and restore this backup. Make sure you get the backup you just edited.

You should now be able to access parental controls again if you got all the steps right. If not, copy the two files you backed up to ~ back into the backup directory and restore the backup again. You should be in no worse shape than you were before.

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A few days with iOS 7

June 14, 2013 in Programming | No comments

tl;dr – I like it; looking forward to the GM.

So, like every other iPhone user, I was *very* curious about iOS 7. As a developer, even more so. (Particularly, was I going to have to scramble to get my app working again under iOS 7?)

So I took my backup and installed it. First impression is that it feels ever so much lighter, psychologically, than iOS 6. The “flattening” of the interface greatly enhances the experience; Microsoft was right on the money with that one. My experiences with Windows 8 only make me wish they could have committed even harder to it and gotten rid of the desktop altogether – but I digress.

Some bugs, as expected, and I’ll be filing radars about them. In general, working pretty well, but there are a few showstoppers for me in this beta related to my day job. If it were not for those, I’d stick with it. Even with the crashes and hiccups, it’s that much of an improvement.

My app does continue to work, and I’ve now, I think, spotted the problem that’s causing it to drop and resume streaming, so that was a benefit.

Today I DFU my phone and return it to iOS 6 so I have a dependable device again, but it’s definitely a wrench. I’d much rather stay in the brighter, smoother, lighter world of iOS 7.

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