How to force iphone and ipad to eject when they are stuck trying to sync

• Relaunching the finder doesn't work.

I'll try quitting iTunes next time it happens and report back. But I'm pretty sure that in previous cases, I've had every app shut down and the sync still won't quit and still prevents me from shutting down.

For the last hour, the fan has been running while the machine tries to sync. The machine refused to stop trying to sync just now. I relaunched the Finder and shut down every app, but the system would not shut down because it believed an operation was still running. I was unable to cancel the sync or eject the iPhone. There is not way to log off or shut down except to do a hard reboot.

Any other suggestions?

I shutting down the phone, but the Mac still was trying to sync to it. I tried connecting the phone to the Mac with a cable, but it was still stuck.

Here's a photo that shows that the phone was still trying to sync despite no other application running.