Apple has made enormous changes to the software architecture of their calendar since 2010 when I first started looking at it. It seems that back then iCal and Reminders might have been two separate apps with two separate sets of data. This goes back to the Mac OS X 10.4 timeframe and MobileMe. It seemed to me that the local syncing vs iCloud syncing problems got much worse, and Apple stopped working on them soon after, when iCal became Calendar and the Calendar data and the Reminder data were integrated.
An iCal / Calendar archive .ibcu file is a special directory that can be opened through Terminal. Older versions of the .icbu file store each calendar entry as a separate .ics file. Recent versions of Calendar create a .icbu archive file that contains an SQL database. You can take a look at it with something like DB Browser for SQLite. It seems to be just Calendar entries, no Reminder data in it.
The Contacts archive .abbu file is still a custom Apple format which is not easily browsable with off the shelf software.
I would nonetheless like to see that âlong since obsoleteâ document. I have tried every other strategy you mentioned multiple times. Caches, on the other hand, are âhiddenâ in countless places one doesnât think to look.
Itâs off-topic (I think) for this thread, but (as I understand how things work) this means you recommend people not use iMazing (or at least iMazing 2; I donât know if iMazing 3 supports Wi-Fi). Comment?
There are two version of the document. (I forgot that but then it was 13 years ago⌠We are a bunch of diehards for local syncing).
I saved them as a Safari .webarchive. Which shows the links in blue. Since I canât upload those I made PDFs of them where the blue is no longer there. If you hover around in the PDF you can see the links but itâs all kind of moot anyway. The links are dead. I didnât check every last one but they probably all donât work any longer.
There are two versions dated 5 months apart. I must have gotten the first one and then for some reason visited it again later and when I found that it had been revised, I saved a new .webarchive of it. I donât remember the differences but again, it was 13 years ago!
Itâs fine to use iMazing for copying specific data off an iPhone; what Iâm recommending against is using USB connections for regular syncing of data.
I totally agree here with Simon (with respect to Apple policy (and lack of decency)) regarding this particular syncing feature, no longer working (but used to work quite well, until negligence set in).
A big potential Apple problem is the following: What other Apple features that used to work, or still work at this time, and which people like and use often, are eventually going to succumb to negligence when upgrading to newer Apple-software?? Most people donât have an issue in this regard, but, for those people for which this is an issue, sorry.
Sorry, but I donât completely trust Apple software (although I am sticking with the Apple platform), and as a result, if I can find a smaller software company which may supply some decent alternative software to provide features I need/want, I tend to acquire the feature(s) from other companies. (A good example is migrating to BusyCal, from Apple-Calendar.)