stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

After spending way too many hours trying to figure out why my iPhone 5 would not sync for the past several weeks, I finally came across the solution outlined by cpaulPHL. I tried going through it carefully, step by step, and it worked! I did find a Voice Memo that was left open and closed it. Never thought to look in there before when troubleshooting. I don't know if that's what did it, but after going through all his other steps, my iPhone is now syncing again, for the first time in weeks!

For the record, his solution looks long and complicated, but that's due to the fact that he takes you through the details of every step. It actually is simpler than it looks, and a whole lot better than some of the other solutions I've seen proposed, which included completely reformatting my phone. No thank you.

Thank you cPaul for solving my worst iPhone experience yet!

Sorry to add just a complaint, but this issue is driving me crazy. Yesterday, I decided to nuke my iPad from orbit (it's the only way to be sure). I restored it to new device status, and started rebuilding it. For some reason, iTunes is not finding my apps, even though they're in the right folder. Given that I'm finding apps as I go, I have to start a lot of syncs. And given that each sync takes at least 10-15 minutes to start, it's incredibly laborious. The process will stretch out over days, due to Apple's inability to address this well-known, long-standing bug.

Really tired of this.

Sorry I did not realize that the results were not viewable. Please go to this link to see the results, and thank you for participating. Hopefully Apple will look at the poll results and figure out what is wrong.

https://www.quicksurveys.com/s/Wa27Jce

Thanks for your initiative ; but could you modify your poll at the item :

"How many songs are you trying to sync?"

and add a "no songs" button ; because I (and so others) am stucked with my ipad and no music to be synced... (only books, photos and apps).

After seeing all of these options, and realizing that the last step BEFORE "Waiting to make changes" was concerning "applying apps" (or something like this), I went to my Apps on my iPhone4s (fully updated) with 7.0.4., and updated them. At that point, everything began updating. After that, I discovered that songs purchased on the iPhone had a little cloud by it. I tapped the cloud and a circle appeared that spun clockwise. I then selected File-Transfer purchasing from iPhone in iTunes; I had to so this several times to get all the songs to transfer to iTunes, buy they are all on there now.

The phone no longer hangs up anywhere in the process of syncing.

I changed nothing else...in terms of my settings, etc.

Just thought I should share my experience. It took awhile to sort this out.

I have been stuck with this for the last few days, iPhone not syncing music correctly.

I have found the following to work:

Open iTunes in Administrator mode, to do this Right Click on the desktop icon and select 'run as administrator' a warning box appears asking you to confirm this action, click 'yes' and iTunes opens as normal.

First of all I then used iTunes to delete all music from my iPhone, this worked.

Then I created a new small Playlist (One Album) and sync'ed this to my iPhone, It Worked!

I then asked iTunes to sync the rest of my library, it paused for what seemed an age (20sec) and then proceeded to sync everything I asked it.

Result!

Maybe it will work for you?

I am referring to my IPad Air. It is beyond reasoning how scewed up the IOS7 platform is........ numberous problems with Sync'g...... I had to down load my audiobook (killing Kennedy) to my IPhone 5S as it Will Not down load to my IPad either over WiFi or connected to ITunes...

IOS7 is a joke.........

I will and suggested that people go to Amazon for Books and music until Apple gets their act together......

I'm having this problem about once a week now.

I've experienced it in various forms since my first iPhone. Since iOS 7, though, it's happening a lot more often.

Back in the pre-iOS7 days, restoring the iPhone usually fixed it for months at a time. Now no longer.

I tried rebuilding my entire iTunes library, as well as restoring my iPhone many, many, many times. Each time, the solution works for a few days to a week.

I'm almost certain it's a particular song or audiobook. It only happens when there's music on the iOS device. The problem has occurred with an iPad3 and an iPad mini, but ONLY when there are music files on the device.

Interestingly, it doesn't seem to matter whether the music library is manually managed or not. The problem occurs with equal frequency either way. That's just not right, in my view. Once manually managed files are loaded onto the device, iTunes should leave them alone, but that's obviously not happening.

The only "solution" I've got so far is to limit the number of songs and audiobooks syncing to my iPhone. That way, when the problem INEVITABLY occurs, I don't have to wait too long for ALL of those songs to get copied back onto the iPhone (again, and again, and again, ...).

So, the only answer I've got to share is that no solution works for very long. And that it's definitely an audio-file, in my case.

Oh yeah, one more thing: my "other" gets HUGE (on the order of 5-10 GB). It probably consists of loaded songs and audiobooks that remain on the device but are no longer accessible. The only way to remove that ugly yellow block is to restore the iPhone. Again. And again. And again...

ExTech wrote:

…So, the only answer I've got to share is that no solution works for very long.

This is my experience as well.

ExTech wrote:

…loaded songs and audiobooks that remain on the device but are no longer accessible.

This is a problem I've been having. The Music app thinks that songs are on the device, but when I try to play them, the app skips by them and their text info becomes gray. The songs remain in the list- but they're grayed out.

Yes, me too, this is very frustrating. Been going on for a week. Looks like you guys have been experienceing this since September.

Is there any kind of workaround or fix? I don't have time to spend 5 hours hacking my stupid phone music library.

i'm having issues on both my iphone 5s and ipad air...

on the iphone, i notice that the first sync often does not sync all of my podcasts, and then i have to sync the device again at which point it could take up to 20 minutes just to get podcasts (maybe 10 new episodes at any given time) onto the device ... the phone is stuck "waiting for changes to be applied"

on the ipad, i noticed that although i've always synced "all books" for some reason the device was prechecked on "selected books" and i had to manually change it back then resync the device. and then it was stuck on "waiting for changes to be applied" for almost 40 minutes (for 300 ebooks)

i'm wondering if the issues are caused by the fact that the podcasts / books are not being managed by the same apps? as in.. there's a podcast app on the phone and a music app, and maybe they don't play with with itunes on the mac.. same for ibooks on the mac having to sync through itunes to then appear in ibooks on the ipad.. something is broken in syncs on both devices.

I've also noticed the spontaneous change to "Selected books" from "All books."

The problem is happening daily now. I feel like I'm playing Russian roulette, every time I sync. The one I'm doing right now is only the fifth sync after a full iPhone restoration.

I'm trying to track which songs get "grayed," but I lost a lot of useful metadata (especially the "date added") when I attempted that extreme fix of rebuilding my entire library. I also lost a lot of album artwork (about 100 songs' worth). And all it bought me was 12 days without long syncs.

There's no clear pattern, but I lose about 2/3 of my song files and 90% of my audiobooks, which suggests it's an audiobook that iTunes doesn't like. Problem is, I've duplicated the problem on an iPad Mini with ZERO audiobooks and manually managed music.

It's the older songs more than the newer ones. That's the only pattern that seems to be emerging.

Lastly, the purchased movie files are "grayed" less often than my home movies or DVD rips.

I was able to get mine working again by using one of the suggestions above. Un-checked sync over air in iTunes and that seemed to have re-set the sync job. Connected directly to the machine and it synced fine, and then re-check the over-the-air box. We'll see if it happens again but so far so good.

Or maybe your expectations are simply too high because as long as their has been such complicated software there has been bugs/problems associated. Unfortantely things don't get fixed overnight, not for lack of trying. Although slightly inconvenient, waiting an extra 5-10 minutes to finish my sync of 24gb of music is not life threatening.

*** PLEASE READ ***

REMINDER: If you haven't filled out the survey, please take a moment to do so.

It appears that Apple has so far been unable to fix this problem. I propose we give them all the information they need to troublehsoot it. I have created a free survey that goes over the basic points. Maybe they can round it down to a specific attribute?

PLEASE TAKE TIME AND FILL THE INFO OUT https://www.quicksurveys.com/s/n4DMr5

APPLE OR ANYONE INTERESTED CAN view survey reports page, https://www.quicksurveys.com/s/Wa27Jce

So far it looks like iOS7 and/or iTunes 11.1.3 is the cause