iOS 5 Syncing issues

I'd like to join the chorus in having major sync problems with iOS5. I have an iPhone 4 and an iPad 2 and both of them keep failing to sync for no good reason. Both wi-fi sync and wired. Either it fails to even start or it says that it has synced completely but some audiobooks I checked off to sync don't show up. On top of that, iTunes says that there should only be about 2.3 GB free but my iPad says that there's like 6.5 GB free. Something is getting lost in communication here. To make it even worse, the "Other" category has ballooned up to more than 1GB and I haven't heard of a way to get rid of that. I love all the new features with iOS5 but the syncing issues are a huge pain...

I'm having the same problem with my iPod Touch (Gen 3) as CelticAces but no problem with my iPad 2. It starts adding files and then just stops syncing without a message that the sync is complete. I can then eject the iPod without getting an error message that it's still syncing. This is the last time I ever take an update from Apple without waiting several weeks. Very disappointing.

Will add to this horror story. I have a 3-month old iPad 2 and a 4G iPod Touch. I upgraded my Lion and iTunes with the latest updates, and I replaced my old iPhoto with iPhoto '11 before I started this odyssey, thinking i wouldn't have issues. Loaded up iOS5 on my iPad, worked like a charm. The next day, I added iOS5 on my iPod, and tried to sync, and it crapped out. I couldn't get Music, Photos, Videos from iPhoto, Voice Memos or Audible Books. Read all these posts about people having problems, and tried many things, but could never get everything on and synced. Went through restore several times even. Even wiped the slate clean and started as if i had a new device. I eventually got everything but Videos from iPhoto, Voice Memos and Audible Books. But only by sycing each file type individually through the sync process - 4 hours.

After a full day of misery, i wanted to make sure new things would sync, so i got a new app, took a few photos, bought a track of music, added a video. Tried to sync my iPad, which was perfect, and low and behold, it crapped out - even lost the Audible books AND videos from iPhoto that had loaded FINE the first time (the biggest mystery of all). Ended up going through the same misery for a day with it. Finally managed to get everything but Videos from iPhoto, Voice Memos and Audible Books. But only by sycing each file type individually through the sync process - 4 more hours. I tried to sync the new files I added, and the only thing that synced was a new podcast I had no interest in.

Got fed up and called Apple. One of his first suggestions was to use the Kindle App for my Audiobooks. I asked him if he thought Steve Jobs would like that suggestion. That ended that discussion. He took me through the same crap I had already gone through over two days, though one suggestion wiped out my photos and cost me another 4 hours of misery. I will enter my third day with Apple later.

I've restored, I've started as new devices, I've gone incrementally through the sync process, I've backed up to the cloud vs my computere, I've synced tethered and wireless, I've tried changing my MOV files to mp4 and i tried redownloading audible files as lower quality, but the same problem.

So, to date, my situation is:

1. I can't get three file types to Sync: Videos from iPhoto, Voice Memos and Audible Books

2. I can't get ANYTHING NEW now onto my devices through the sync process - except podcasts. I can download iTunes purchased files through the iCloud, but that's essentailly a work around.

I have my original iPod white brick - the first version, every version since, plus a few extra for ones I dropped or got stolen. I have been using Macs for ten years. I have upgraded operating systems too many times to count. I have never experienced such a co*k-up. If I wanted brain damage like this, I'd have bought an Android phone and a PC.....

Will advise if Apple comes up with a solution.

Irritated beyond description...Sigh

Hi everyone, THIS IS THE CORRECT ANSWER FOR ALL CONCERNED

The problem I had was similar, I updated to IOS 5 and none of my music had synced AT ALL and everytime I went into my iTunes to sync my music, I clicked on all the albums I wanted and pressed apply then the Sync button appeared and I pressed that, but 30 seconds after the syncing started, it would drop and the button would become available again and none of my music had transferred and the Syncing message on iPhone never appeared although at the bottom of the Summary page (when you click on your iphone name on the left hand menu above your playlist) it showed that I had already synced 3 gb of music onto it.

Now fter reading hundreds of reviews, blogs and community discussions over the internet for a whole day, I have now found the RIGHT AND SIMPLE ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM and these are the actions to be done below:

1 - First you must go into your iPhone "Settings" then choose "iCloud". Click on the "Account" tab and create your new @me.com email address. Then you must that all tabs (Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Bookmarks, Notes, Photo Stream, Documents and Data and Find My iPhone) are ON. For most of them the iPhone will ask you to either "Merge" or "Import" just say YES to all. Then click on "Storage and Backup" and make sure that the "iCloud Backup" tab is on YES. Once you've done this then you are ready to Sync your iPhone properly as below:

2 - PLUG IN YOUR IPHONE AND GO TO ITUNES. Right click on your iPhone name on the left hand bar menu on iTunes and click on "TRANSFER PURCHASES"

3 - Once purchases have been transferred, then right click on your iPhone name again and click on "BACKUP"

4 - Once you have done Transfer Purchases then Backup then you are ready to restore the iPhone to its original settings. This will mean that everything will be erased from the iPhone and transferred (synced) into iTunes so dont panic if once you've restored (which can take up to 1 hour) you would have lost all your apps and music etc..... you will get them back later on stage 5

5 - Once you have restored and rebooted your iPhone, you then UNPLUG IT, close iTunes, then re-open iTunes and re-plug in your iPhone..... because you chose to do the backup of the iPhone originally on iCloud it will automatically reload everything (Apps and original music on your iphone) that you had before.

If the above does not work then please contact Apple Genius but I think this should help a lot of people so go for it....

Good luck to all

Marie

Be careful trying this "CORRECT ANSWER FOR ALL CONCERNED" Being desperate, I tried it. Followed it letter by letter, and at the end of the restore and sync, it left me worse off than I was before in terms of the files on my device - and still doesn't sync properly. An hour's work cost me all the effort of the past day....

I'm also going crazy trying too get a complete sync of al the contents in my itunes library. Now it won't sync my iTunes U collection of physics lessons but for one collection from Stanford. All the material from MIT won't sync. That's a lot of missing material and as a physics teacher a TOTAL BUMMER.

What the heck is going on here with Apple? We waited FOREVER for this totally hyped iOS 5 and it has turned out to be so problematic.

I really don't like to be negative in theres forum threads. But, I am SO frustrated. 😢

@Sinoman. I noticed on your profile you have a Mac,.... this method only works on iPhones so far and probably only in the UK.... I am not sure but you are right I should have made that clear in my last post.... plus if you only worked on it for an hour then you have somewhere not done something right or missed something out cos that method takes a minimum of three hours in total. I got this method from the GENIUSES in the Cambridge UK Apple Store so dont blame me, blame Apple!!

it is really slow..
when the ipod is locked I double-click the home button to change song & it takes more time than before. Also it freezes a lot it doesn't respond to what I click. Some apps were deleted from the ipod. I have a 4g ipod touch

With all due respect, i didn't blame anything on anyone. I just advised people that your suggestion that your solution is the "CORRECT ANSWER FOR ALL CONCERNED" is a bit of a stretch. Furthermore, the time allocated to this effort is relative to what you have on your device, as well as the platform you are on, so you can rest assured the amount of time required is also not the same for "ALL CONCERNED". So, cool your jets and don't be so sensitive.

Ok, for the rest of you that didn't get their problems solved by the one size fits solution from CrazyFrenchBird - I don't know that I have a solution, but I've narrowed down the gist of the problem in my case - which I presume only covers people in my situation and is not the panacea for "ALL CONCERNED". Although this is not the end of this, I am not going to bang my head against the wall trying to make something work that doesn't want to work, as Apple clearly has some bugs to squash.

I was really having two issues - one was related to not being able to sync up certain file types - .MOV videos from my camera in files on iPhoto, some old voice memos, and Audiobooks from Audible.com. The other problem I was having was difficulty getting complete syncs afterward.

Rather than fighting this, I have concluded that either the new iTunes update or iOS 5 is struggling with some file types that heretofore haven't been a problem.

So, I unchecked all the sync boxes except Apps and managed to delete all my data files, then went through incrementally and synced each file type, this time avoiding the problematic file types (which for me, were MOV files in iPhoto, voice memos, and Audiobooks from Audible). Leaving these files off, I sync like a charm, and am able to add files, sync again with no problem (as long as I stay away from my troublesome file types). I have advised Apple about this, as I have an open service order on this matter. My tech at Apple agrees with me that it sounds like there is a bug reading certain file types in certain situations, and that this may impact the syncing process in general, not just the syncing for the problem files.

My workarounds are: 1) forget about my old voice memos for now, the new ones in iOS 5 seem to work fine. 2) Use Audible's app for listening to my books, as it works great. 3) I have some freeware that can change the MOV files to MP4, which i can drop into Movies, and it's fine. None of these workarounds are acceptable though, and I intent to pursue this with Apple with my open service order. I am also talking to Audible, as it might be a compatability issue that they need to coordinate with Apple on.

As a follow-up to my earlier post, I wanted to add that there is a randomness to my partial syncing that is hard to fathom. Sometimes my iOS 5 equiped iPad 2 will get hung up early in its syncing. Sometimes it will sync quite a bit more. But, it NEVER is able to complete a sync. It has NEVER correctly synced my Safari Bookmarks (it presents an older version of my Safari Bookmarks). It has NEVER completely downloaded my iTunes U material (previously mentioned). It has NEVER completely synced all my ebooks or audiobooks. I have checked my settings over and over. I don't think that's it. I just think iOS 5 is broken or the new version of iTunes (10.5) is broken. Or, they are both broke.

I may be getting old, but I have no interest in pouring any more time, sweat, and tears into this. When I bought the original iPad there was a great deal of problems with its wifi performance. Months later Apple seemed to get a handle on it and that problem was fixed. All the work-arounds folks came up with never achieved efficacy beyond a few special cases. And a lot of time was completely wasted. I believe this syncing problem is in the same category. It isn't user fixable although with great effort it appears you can regain some functionality by laborious jury rigging. Something is organically wrong with iOS 5 and or iTunes 10.5.

We all need to submit entries to Apple's Feedback site. The more people that site registers as having syncing problems the more attention Apple is going to give to this. I'd like to believe Apple has personel whose job is to carefully read these forums threads to get the pulse of the Apple Nation. I am not sure they do. But, I am confident that the Feedback site is used by Apple to gauge the severity of a problem. So, please do write.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

on your device, go into Settings, Safari, and clear the cache. That should get rid of the "Other" issue.

Amen, Brother.....sigh

Oh, for the love of Steve....I sent feedback on this issue, and in the pull down menus for operating systems, they have not updated to include the latest iOS or iTunes versions. Very Microsoftian......

Echoing Mr. Luigi,

"We all need to submit entries to Apple's Feedback site."

It's not hard:

Copy your post from this forum.

Google for Apple Feedback, or link

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Select page (iPhone, Touch, etc.)

Paste your entry into Comment, fill other fields, & Go!

Just curious...Do you need to have OS 10.7.2 (Lion) running on your desk/lap-top for all this wireless syncing business to work? There is so much information on all this in so many different places it is a little painful to bring it all together.

Of course, I said I gave up on trying to solve this problem.

Clearly I am not a man of my word. 🙂