I continue to have persistent problems with APSDaemon.exe. I'm on an older (relatively) Windows system, a Dell Inspiron E1505 running Windows XP SP3. It just barely has the memory resources to do what I need to do. And now, with the latest version of iTunes, APSDaemon.exe comes along and hogs them. It constantly and consistently takes up 50% of my CPU. Usually, when I'm not doing anything CPU-intensive, I don't notice a huge problem with this. But sometimes it really gets burdened.
I have read this thread, and tried a number of things. APSDaemon.exe is not on any of my startup queues, in the registry or anywhere -- I've run the "Autoruns" utility and checked. In fact, in poking at things with that I completely crippled my system, killing something I should not have killed, and was fortunate that Windows could revert to my last successful configuration.
APSDaemon.exe seems to be part of iTunes that starts whenever iTunes starts. I tried removing or renaming the executable, as others have suggested here, and my iTunes complained that it was missing something and couldn't run. I use iTunes, so I had to restore it.
I don't have any interest in wireless sync, and wish I could completely disable this. I do, however, access my iTunes through the Remote application on my iPad -- does this also utilize the Push service? In any case, I wish Apple would notice this problem we're having and do something about this CPU hog -- make it optional to disable it or make it more respectful of older systems.