stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

I too have been having this same problem since iOS 7 and iTunes 11. Looks like I have found a workaround:

On the "music" tab, I have opted "selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres" instead of "entire music library" and have just gone through and selected all the artists individually. I then started a sync. which still displayed "waiting for changes to be applied..." for a couple of minutes, but did then start to sync.

After I done this, I tried to revert back to syncing "entire music library" but then it wiped all my songs and got stuck on "waiting for changes to be applied..." again.

I will be sticking to this until there is a fix for this clear problem that has been ongoing for some time now. After years of owing iPods and iPhones that synced seamlessly with iTunes, I am extremely frustrated with this. I've always been a Mac person "because it just works" but don't think I can defend Apple at the moment.

pegaudet wrote:

As I noticed the other day, the 'waiting for changes' bit is pretty much not there when the phone and itunes have the same playlists. But even then it still insists on re-copying one song that was already there... I would be interested to know if that means it ends up copying that song again as a separate song and creates a duplicate on the ios (which would lead to a growing "other" category) or if it overwrites the one that was there.

Holy cow that's EXACTLY what I'm seeing. It's always the same song, too. And if I change or delete it, it becomes another song.

For a while, I was "going down the list" and noticing that iTunes was picking particular albums as its "sacrificial lamb" targets. It would pick songs from a particular album. If I were to eliminate that album, it'd go down alphabetically to another album (not the very next one, but alphabetically nonetheless).

Even with my "clean syncs," one song (the same song) is always "reloaded." As you say, it may well be reloading WITHOUT overwriting, but it'd be a long time before "Other" grows appreciably at only one song per sync.

sc_ttadler wrote:

I too have been having this same problem since iOS 7 and iTunes 11. Looks like I have found a workaround:

On the "music" tab, I have opted "selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres" instead of "entire music library" and have just gone through and selected all the artists individually. I then started a sync. which still displayed "waiting for changes to be applied..." for a couple of minutes, but did then start to sync.

After I done this, I tried to revert back to syncing "entire music library" but then it wiped all my songs and got stuck on "waiting for changes to be applied..." again.

I will be sticking to this until there is a fix for this clear problem that has been ongoing for some time now. After years of owing iPods and iPhones that synced seamlessly with iTunes, I am extremely frustrated with this. I've always been a Mac person "because it just works" but don't think I can defend Apple at the moment.

I'm seeing something VERY similar.

I add all my songs by genre (instead of artist(, and the syncs are relatively clean. They're fast, at any rate, with only one song that gets repeatedly disabled and reloaded with every sync.

Then, I try to sync the playlists, and the problem immediately reappears.

Problem with this "fix" is that my playlists are the result of, literally, decades of personal audiophilia (some of them even duplicate my favorite mix tapes in high school).

Without playlists, and without Genius (which I learned to disable a long time ago), it's just a huge mess of data to me.

For now, I have the ear of someone in the executive relations office as well as a senior tech, but still haven't got a "fix" yet.

My "solution" right now: I made the move to iCloud at the cost of a LOT of old info (I used iCal as a journal as well as a scheduler; it had entries dating back to 1/1/00). So now I don't have to physically sync as often as I used to.

It's more avoidance than solution, but life goes on.

This may have been mentioned, but one thing that I have noticed is that the sync seems to be choking on albums with multiple tracks with the same numbers. I noticed that I had a number of albums in iTunes where I'd upgraded to a remastered version of an album, but didn't delete the original album, so that I have two Track #1s, Track #2s, etc. I went through and either deleted or renamed the duplicates and then my sync unstuck and all the data I wanted transferred went through.

Another observation that might be significant for apple.

As I explained last week or so, I only sync my music via smart playlists. Normally, it only takes about 2 minutes to sync and it usually syncs less than 20 songs.

This morning I clocked it at nearly 10 minutes at the "stuck on waiting" prompt and when it finally came back it started copying 35 songs.

Maybe there's an exponential factor going on here?

1 song = a few seconds

15 songs = about 2 minutes stuck waiting

30 songs = about 10 mins

etc..

Depending how many songs you're copying, maybe for some people it's not exactly "stuck". Maybe waiting weeks would be required? Far more time than anybody would be willing to let it go on.

Can anybody else confirm the time=songs² observation (maybe it's not exactly song times song, but similar to time=function(songs) raised to some exponent)? It would be interesting as an experiment to see if syncing 1 new song repeated 100 times takes less time than syncing 100 songs only once.

It could just be my phone is having a bad day.

I haven't noticed a direct connection between sync-time and songs as precise as pegaudet's, but the "waiting for changes" definitely takes longer when more items are supposed to be uploaded.

That assumes it's a working sync, of course. Most of mine are not.

Also, smart playlists bring on the problem just like plain playlists do. The only "solution" I've found is to sync all the music without the playlists. As I'd mentioned, I do it by selecting all the genres.

It's not a real solution, of course, because my playlists are necessary to "make sense" of my collection.

I did try re-activating genius as an interim fix, but no dice. It apparently depends in large part on the iPhone's playlists to make its decisions. No playlists = no genius, most of the time.

Oh, and iOS 7.1 hasn't fixed anything for me so far. It has made a prettier "power down" slider, which I get to see quite often as I must now reset my iPhone after every few syncs, and reformat the iPhone as a brand new phone every few days.

I bought a brand new iPhone 5s last week and I just (few minutes ago) updated to iOS 7.1 and guess what?

It's STUCK on "waiting for changes...!" 😠

Edit: it was stuck for about 10 minutes but eventually syncronized.

Message was edited by: Fulgurite

7.1 didn't fix anything for me either. iPhone/iTunes sync is still thoroughly broken. At this point, I'm 30 minutes into the "waiting for changes..." game.

So far, my solution has been: I don't sync my iPhone anymore.

Ok, once in a while, I start a sync when I have a couple hours to spare with iTunes grinding away on nothing. Otherwise, I just live with a static music library, and I no longer assume my iPhone reflects anything current in my music library.

My iPhone 1 in 2007 worked fine- no sync problems ever. For that matter, my iPod 1 in 2001 worked fine- no sync problems ever.

Apple, with its ongoing iTunes iterations, is steadily shedding functionality and usability.

Now I know what it felt like to be a Windows user back in the day — your device fails, you have absolutely no idea why, and you finally just accept that it's broken, and that there are things you theoretically should be able to do, but you just can't.

Windows fatalism comes to Apple owners…

I can confirm the issue is back with 7.1 for me too (iPod Touch 5G).

At least I have frequent crashes in medialibraryd on the device, thus crashlogs relating to the issue.

I opened an apple bug for this.

I feel your pain, Fulgerite.

Part of why I upgraded to the 5s was to get AppleCare on the case. It was a lame rationale, I realize, and mostly I just wanted the neat, new phone. But I am most certainly making the most of my warranty support, and I strongly advise you to do the same.

Kim Hill1 wrote:

So far, my solution has been: I don't sync my iPhone anymore.

My iPhone 1 in 2007 worked fine- no sync problems ever. For that matter, my iPod 1 in 2001 worked fine- no sync problems ever.

Windows fatalism comes to Apple owners…

I'm completely with you - perhaps we shouldn't invest so much care into these devices, but it was Steve Jobs' explicit goal that Apple products be the center of our digital lives. It's hard not to feel betrayed after seven years' dedication to that ideal.

pegaudet wrote:

As I explained last week or so, I only sync my music via smart playlists. Normally, it only takes about 2 minutes to sync and it usually syncs less than 20 songs.

According to the techs who examined my sync logs, it was media. So I synced all my music by selecting genres, without problems. So THEN they said it was my playlists.

Now, as I'd mentioned before, my playlists go back decades. I can reconstruct them manually, of course, but I wanted to try a few shortcuts first.

Before, I simply placed the iTunes Library file back in the iTunes directory. But that may be where the corruption dwelt.

So I tried exporting XML playlists, but it's possible the problem lies in the Active-X programming, which may be why the problem kept coming back.

This time, I deleted all my playlists after exporting the ones that really mattered to me as plaintext files. No way there could corruption in there; they're practically ASCII files, right?

Well, so far so good. I've had clean syncs since yesterday, of a sort I haven't seen in over seven months. Or rather, I've seen them, but never while syncing my music AND my playlists.

I may have found a fix, in other words. And based on what pegaudet's posting, possibly a fix for peg as well.

I'll keep this board posted if my "fix" fails.

I forgot to mention: the issue I discussed below is still occurring.

One song, the same song each time, gets deleted and reloaded.

It's a minor issue by itself (it's over in less than a second), but still causes me some concern.

Still, if that minor issue is my ONLY sync problem, I'll shoulder it gladly.

ExTech wrote:

pegaudet wrote:

As I noticed the other day, the 'waiting for changes' bit is pretty much not there when the phone and itunes have the same playlists. But even then it still insists on re-copying one song that was already there... I would be interested to know if that means it ends up copying that song again as a separate song and creates a duplicate on the ios (which would lead to a growing "other" category) or if it overwrites the one that was there.

Holy cow that's EXACTLY what I'm seeing. It's always the same song, too. And if I change or delete it, it becomes another song.

For a while, I was "going down the list" and noticing that iTunes was picking particular albums as its "sacrificial lamb" targets. It would pick songs from a particular album. If I were to eliminate that album, it'd go down alphabetically to another album (not the very next one, but alphabetically nonetheless).

Even with my "clean syncs," one song (the same song) is always "reloaded." As you say, it may well be reloading WITHOUT overwriting, but it'd be a long time before "Other" grows appreciably at only one song per sync.

ExTech wrote:

pegaudet wrote:

As I explained last week or so, I only sync my music via smart playlists. Normally, it only takes about 2 minutes to sync and it usually syncs less than 20 songs.

I may have found a fix, in other words. And based on what pegaudet's posting, possibly a fix for peg as well.

I'll keep this board posted if my "fix" fails.

FYI, my particular install is not technically "broken" (in failure mode, needing a fix) at the moment.... It's just slow and uncomfortable... (avg 2 mins "waiting for changes to take effect".... both itunes and ios device seem to be saying that, so neither side seems to be doing much at that point).. When it finally gets past the sync waiting thing, the rest goes fast enough.

If apple technology was like a highway, itunes 10.7 & ios 5 was like a newly paved 8 lane highway without any other traffic around.... Now with 11.1 and ios 7, it seems to have become a pothole riddled goat path on the side of a cliff.... It'll still get you there as long as you're slow, careful, not in a hurry and don't fall off the edge... Just don't expect to set landspeed records.

I have come to expect 2-5 minute sync times as the "new normal".

I admire your tolerance.

I'm back to 30-second syncs.

If I'm adding a big movie file, it starts loading immediately after no more than 30 seconds of "waiting for changes"

That's what I was used to before iOS7, and so far, for the past few days, it's what I've been seeing after deleting and re-importing all my playlists as individual plaintext files

Am I 'better" now? One can only hope.