I trusted Apple! Until a few days ago everything worked fine. I'm a professional musician, love my iPhone and have spent a "fortune" on iTunes. My two kids have their own iPod Touch and we share the iTunes library. Never ever would I have imagined to go into all sorts of technical depths and corners again, like I used to do once in a while when Windows was still obviously MS-Dos in disguise (it probably still is). Went through all checklists, performed and passed diagnostic tests, checked port settings, upgraded virsusoftware, run scans, and finally ended here in the user forum, the last stop before paying bills for help-desk services I feel I have already paid for!
Back from a vacation I upgrade the full Monty (iTunes 10.4.0.80 and the new versions for Safari and the moviethingy). My iPhone seemed to have passed once in the upgrade but was'nt able to copy itself. Our 32GB iPod 3 lost it's purchases and couldn't leave a copy, so I freed extra disk space. On all subsequent tries neither iPod nor iPhone would go beyond the first stap in syncing (making a copy of itself). No error message, no hang-up (according the Window Task Manager), just no progress, none! In the old days of slam-dunk programming we called this an infinite loop! Old mistakes in programming are made over and over again, when compnies go for cost reductions and hire inexperienced youth (the slam dunkers) while discharging the experienced guys.
I sure hope & belief this is not a "trick" by Apple to
1) make money from their pais help desk services
2) herding their clients to the iCloud and let them pay extra
3) make their clients dump their MicroSoft based machines to buy Apple stuff (which I considered anyway)
I am pretty sure Apple will fix this soon by issuing a new release of iTunes quickly. It is more in line with their image on the market.
If not, sell your stocks because it means the wrong sort of people have taken over the Apple company. Which would be a great loss to the world, would'nt it?