stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

This is a joke...Ive always been so happy and now all of a sudden my phone wont synch - it hangs at various stages and it seems the only solution is to go through a painful process as kindly listed by cpaulPHL above.

Come on apple - sort it out or lose very loyal customers!!

Just adding on to this thread. Same problem as everyone on this board, getting stuck on "waiting to apply changes". Also noticed all of my music I ripped from cd's are no longer playable on my iphone, only allows songs purchased thru itunes to be played. I'm starting to feel like I'm being assimilated by apple. Apple, should I just go ahead and bend over and wait?

Unfortunately, now it's taking forever on 'waiting for sync to start' - I just can't get itunes 11.1.1 to work properly.

I performed what Nancy Trainer suggested for my iPad. I "Restored iPad..." and upon completion of that step I "Restore backup...". Works great now.

I'm having the same issue. Spent three hours on the phone today with an "escalated support representative" who ultimately told me he couldn't determine exactly why it wasn't working but I should add songs back into my library one at a time (or in small chunks) to determine where file(s) are causing issues. With over 4,000 music files, suffice it to say this is not realistic. Not what I would expect from a company with 400 bn. dollars to invest in getting things right the first time.

Well, I must be jinxed. Because after a solid week, this morning my iPhone 5s once again started hanging in "waiting for changes to be applied". I'm still not sure what caused this latest round. But it does appear that the problem is within iOS 7, and not iTunes 11. I'm running iOS 7.0.2 and iTunes 11.1.1

This time, after the problem reappeared, some of my existing playlists with music already on the iPhone had entries that appeared to be downloading (the circle with the square inside). It appears that when the problem occurs, something gets corruped in the Music database on the iPhone, and the only resolution is to wipe and restart.

Interesting observation - after the problem appeared, I tried turning on iTunes Match on my iPhone. This gives a warning that "all music will be erased and replaced with content from iCloud". And yet, even with this enabled, going to "About" my iPhone shows the same 4000+ songs on the device. And even though iTunes shows that iTunes Match had been turned on on the iPhone, it also showed Audio content.

In the end, here's what I had to do:

- within iTunes deselect "Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected"

- remove the iPhone from USB / iTunes

- hard restart of the iPhone (to stop the "in-progres" sync)

- reconnect the iPhone to USB / iTunes

- select "Transfer Purchases" to move any updated apps or newly-purchased content back to iTunes

- force a manual Backup (local)

- restore iPhone and wait

Once the iPhone was restored, it showed zero songs on the device. I disabled iTunes Match, and once again the iTunes Music sync completes properly. I did not have to sync a subset of songs each time - 4357 songs were transferred successfully. And I have verified that the synch is once again working.

I ended up being patient (about 20 minutes) and it seemed to go through fine eventually. Glad I didn't do all the things suggested here. Seems to be something in a recent upgrade that's holding things up.

Unfortunately, waiting doesn't always work. In my case, I let it stay for 2 hours before finally giving up.

I've now managed to fix my issue. Had to restore my iPhone, and set it up as a new device. Not ideal, but it worked for me.

Thanks for this. I unchecked Sync with this iPhone over WIFI and music started to sync. Been bugging me for a while now, but after restoring this finally worked so thanks!

Its seems as if Apple is ignoring the complaints, not only is the iTunes screen stuck at "waiting for changes to be applied" the touch screen response is out of sync and the screen freezes up when web browsing and other activities. There is a saying if it ain't broke don't fix it. iOS7 has been THE WORST iOS so far, and I have been with Apple and iOS before it was cool to be. My iPod Touch is now a paper stopper and the customer service, and people at Apple seem to be just sitting around doing nothing.

Tell me about it. I've had issues with only one smart playlist with live updating actually working for a long time. I miss being able to use smart playlists 😟

I tried all the suggestions. Nothing has worked for me 😟. I just want my music...

Hey,

I read all the replies and tried almost all of them! I just did a complete reset of my iPad including all its content. It wasn't to bad as it was a new iPad so had pretty much nothing on it, but still a pain!

Oh well, I now have all my precious music!

Thanks and Bless,

Sam (:

I still cannot sync properly, even on my brand new iPhone 5S. If I leave it connected for 30 mins or so, it will start to sync but not finish, and some of the "synced" files are actually missing. It is extraordinary that Apple could have released an iTunes-iOS combination with this bug - and that they have failed to do anything about it!