wifi sync not working after ios6 update

Hmmm. I have 2 ATVs here...

Oops, Tomei made me realize I meant to say Bounjour, not Exposé! And I would think it's the adding of the Apple TV to the network that might affect this issue, rather than just having one or more ATVs. And I assume it's all just temporary...

Mea culpa: I have an Apple TV 3. 3 months ago, I had an Apple TV 1. ATV 2/3 are streaming devices, so my ATV3 does not show up in iTunes as did my ATV 1 which did and it synchronized its internal drive to selected titles.

All that said, WiFi sync performance seems to be the same with ATV3 as with ATV1.

I use Connectify to share my Internet via wifi, from my cable modem, thru Ethernet to my laptop. No actual router. It all seemed to work fine syncing my 3GS to my laptop running Windows 7, 64 bit. Then around the time of iOS6 or the iTunes released around that time, my 3GS stopped being syncable reliably. My girlfriends 3GS and iPad 2 on her WinXP machine stopped also. She now has an iphone 5. No better. I got an ipad mini a lil over a month ago. It seems more reliable than any of the others, and often shows up to be synced when my phone doesn't. But sometimes the opposite occurs. Sometimes they both work, when not plugged into power, sometimes both when plugged in, sometimes one or the other, sometimes neither. I would say the mini works less than half the time, but still more an twice as often as the other devices. But this seems across the board, regardless of OS, Mac, Win, version, XP, 7, 10, iOS# and device seem to make no difference. Type of wifi, band, frequency, router or not, static IP or not, it seems to affect all. Everyone has a good day and thinks things are finally fixed, I am curious if anyone has had a single week of reliability since it al started.

Meant to add also that no Apple TV has ever been used in any situation.

MacUserAE, I have the same problem as you. After the recent updates wi-fi sync works perfectly for me. However when my iMac goes to sleep sometimes I cannot not wake it up with my iPad or iPhone to sync them via wi-fi. I have to go downstairs and physically wake the computer up.

I am making more progress now. WiFi sync has been working perfectly for more than 36 hours -- for the first time in more than 6 months!

[1] Unplug all Apple TV from network

[2] On my Mac, open Terminal and run "ping apple.com" continuously.

[3] Make sure iTunes is the active app on my Mac, and lock the screen by choosing "Login Window"

[4] Set all iOS devices to use static IP address

I suspect that my Mac (or my router) has trouble keeping its network connection up. By running the "ping", which sends one network packet per second, probably keeps the network up.

I also noticed that if iTunes is not the active app, it seems more "sleepy".

Now as soon as I plug my iPhone/iPad (both are 6.1.2) into charger, they start syncing immediately. Before, they would show the "looking for XXX's Mac" message for a few seconds, then start syncing (on a good day) or fail (usually).

More info:

I am running a Mac Mini basically as a file server and web server. It never sleeps. I rarely use it myself. But I allow my daughter to use it for 30 minutes per day. So she has a separate login session. So we have two login sessions on the Mac at the same time.

I also make sure that my daughter's account cannot launch iTunes or iTunesHelper (by making myself the owner of these 2 executables, and chmod og-rwx). In the past, whenever I plug in the iPhone onto the Mac, her account would start running a second copy of iTunes, and that probably confuses the whole wifi sync protocol).

Not sure if this will keep on going. I have my fingers crossed and will report any updates.

This cludge might work for you but not the inter-religous faith of Win 7 and iTunes for Win 7 and iPhone 5 of which I am a devout beliver (NOT) I live in a mixed environment.. either way it seems though, iTunes is the culprit.

Tomei Ningen: I am impressed by your ingenuity! I am also chagrined that you had to go to such lengths to try to make WiFi sync work (Apple, please note.).

I would classify your arrangement as an extensive work around and is not something I'd be willing to do, except in a test environment that I could 'crash and burn' without any impact on my life.

garypaul: Although I am in a somewhat mixed environment (We have one Windows 7 gaming computer with one iPhone 4S USB synchronized to it, so it's outside the WiFi sync problem.), my core infrastructure is 100% Apple and all of my WiFi sync problems are within the Apple infrastructure. The past comments attributed to Apple Support about their not seeing the problem and concluded that they did not plan to work the problem because the complainant's problem was NOT in a 100% Apple environment, really disturbs me.

I do agree that the evidence continues to point to an iOS 6 issue more consistently than any other component.

What i have noticed is that in Windows 32bit things seems to be more stable. But in windows 7(64 bit) apple mobile device stops working. I decided to create another apple mobile device running under services and it actuall kept an open connection even after restart but itunes would cause to many complications with it at startup. The problem lies with apple mobile device deacgtivating itself when itunes is opened and not being able to restart applemobile device while itunes is open!

Sarah, if it does not work in a pure Apple environment I have no hope.. Oddly my uVerse gateway/router sees the iPhone5 when the iPhone5 is connected via wifi, but iTunes does not see the iphone when I have my computer connected via wifi. It worked once and was very slow to finish the wif sync but it has never worked since.This is why I think it's iTunes, there is no way to force iTunes and no network tinkering with iTunes to get it to work. If at least I could see a handshake attempt being made by iTunes to connect to the iPhone with some kind of failure I might have a clue as to the problem, but nada, nothing!

garypaul,

you can see what seems to be a failed handshake between iTunes and iPhone by running this command in the MacOS Terminal:

syslog -w

Whenever you hit the "Sync" button on the iphone, you will see some junk coming out from the syslog. So at least the iPhone is able to send something to the Mac. Just the Mac side seems confused.

My sync buttom on the iPhone in setting general is greyed out unless the iPhone has established a connection .. it wirks when I am wired in but not over wifi.

For what it is worth I can ping the iPhone DHCP nework address..