How do you transfer a playlist to iphone on iTunes 11?

I'm having the same experience. Like the redesign overall, but am finding some straight forward things like your question here a bit unintuitive.

when you open itunes on your mac go to the phone under devices on left hand side.under options make sure to put a check mark on sync songs & videos. now go to the music tab & you will see that your new playlist does not have a check mark next to it. put a check mark next to the new playlist & sync. when ever you add a new playlist you need to put a check mark next to it

Once your iPhone loads up on your iTunes: 1. Click the iPhone button. 2. Click the "On This iPhone" button. 3. Underneath the "Done" button, there is an "add to" button with a little picture of three horizontal lines and a plus sign, click that. 4. You should have a collumn for your iPhone on the right side of the iTunes app now and the rest of the app should show your artists in icon format or something akin to that. Click the "Playlists" button. Your playlists from iTunes should now be on the left in a collumn and your iPhone collemn should still be on the right. Now just drag whichever playlists you want from your iTunes playlists collumn into your iPhone collumn and your good to go.

I'm having the same problem. In the video tutorial, it actually shows how to manually add items to your device...

1. When the iPhone is attached, click on its icon in the top menu bar.
2. The next menu bar has an option 'On This iPhone' - click on this.
3. Then click on Add To... (which is on the right within the new menu)
4. Your iPhone is then displayed in the right column, with all the contents.
5. You should then be able to drag and drop any items directly to the iPhone.

HOWEVER:

I can get as far as number 4, when trying to drag and drop absolutely nothing happens...

So, in theory it's possible - getting it to work however....

I've just discovered how to do this:

If you drag the desired playlist/album/song to the right column but drag it to the very top to where the Main items are listed - NOT the playlists - then the whole column is highlighted. The iPhone then adds the selection.