stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

This is depressing. Apple was always so reliant. I have no trouble syncing my ipad. What makes this worse is that I'm a music person, so this is my first experience post Ipod Classic. I kinda hate the Touch,but I don't have much choice.

Well, I gotta say that since the last iTunes update (12.1.0.50) I haven't had any trouble syncing. There's been a couple of times when it looked like it was going to hang on "Waiting for changes...", but so far over the last month or so it's always finished. Good job, Apple.

iPad Air, iOS was 7 then 8.

I have found a solution for me (probably short term)

iPhone 6 Plus iOS 8.2

Libary 24k songs

Phone 14k songs.

Background:

My phone continually got hung up on waiting for changes.

I switched to iTunes Match. It was fine streaming, but it was not able to "download all" of the songs on the playlist, so I went back to syncing.

First I blitzed my phone. Started fresh.

Then, reading about the potential conflicts with DRM, I found 5 songs that were protected ACC.

Per the instructions on Apple.com, I deleted them and re-downloaded them via iTunes match to hopefully download ACC versions.

3 of them downloaded as ACC.

The other 2 remained protected acc.

I tried burning them to disc with the intent to reimport.

The disc would not burn.

So, i threw away $1.98 and just deleted them.

Then I synced. It went fine.

Then I synced again (I have smart playlists that change based on the songs that are played)

And those supplemental songs seemed to synced fine.

So maybe, just maybe, those two pesky protected ACC files were the source of my woes (**** you, Funkmaster Flex!)

Sync seems to be working for me lately. I'm almost afraid to report this, lest it be some kind of brief anomaly. Could it be that our long national nightmare is over?

I'm using: iTunes 12.1.2 Yosemite 10.10.3 iOS 8.3

If it keeps working like this, I might even risk the "Convert higher bit rate songs" option again.

DO not change the settings if they work!

I did and I have just had to erase the iPhone for the fifth time, everytime Apple sends out an update these syncproblems begin all over.

The solution could be blocking Apple entirely, it´s easy on the Mac but can an iPhone be made to block updates?

I had the same issue as everyone else, so I Google'd and found this thread

Not sure if it's mentioned here already, but what I did to fix it was:

- In iTunes, deselect "Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected"
- I then unplugged the iPhone, went into Settings>General>Usage>Music then deleted all the music. This didn't work the first time, so I did it about 3 times.
- Then plugged into iTunes again. Didn't sync, but under Music selected "Selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres", deselected everything, started a sync, then midway into the sync I cancelled it.
- Manually selected the music I wanted in iTunes, then let it sync. Took a while (had to copy all the music across again), but now it works!

I'm not sure this method will work for everyone, but it worked for me. I'm certain there is an easier way, but this is how I got it to work without factory restoring or resetting my phone.

Good luck!!!

Well, functional iTunes sync was indeed too good to be true. As of just now, iTunes is inexplicably "Syncing Artwork" to my iPhone.

That is to say, artwork for 6,000 tracks. Artwork that was already there.

Looks like the ongoing disaster of iTunes sync is not over.

Thanks very much! I did not find any unfinished downloads, but I deleted the voice memos and unchecked all songs and playlists to be synched in itunes. Now the synch happens without any hiccups. Very grateful!

THANK YOU! IT WORKED.

I'm not saying this will work but I found a solution to this problem for my iPhone 4 with I.O.S. 7.2.1.

Seemed to spend all day trying to sync my iPhone and laptop.

I certainly spent hours reading and trying out the solutions offered in this and other threads.

Finally I decided to back up my phone and re-store as a new device.

The iPhone backed up within 15 minutes and on a whim I decided to re-try syncing the phone. It was so quick I missed it.

I synced the phone again and checked it when completed and can confirm it had worked.

So, for what it's worth, I tell this story in the hope it may help someone else.

Alan

Worked flawlessly for me – process is perfectly defined and all is well with my iPhone 6+, enormously helpful, thank you!

I have a 5S and a 4S. The 5S syncs with almost no problem. The 4S, however, has been having problems for two years. As others have pointed out, this is unforgivable, Apple. If there are errors in the syncing process, why not simply prompt the user to fix them? Have a "Recommended" option for the non-technical and resolve the errors. This is embarrassing. I'm actually embarrassed for your company, and I'd like my iOS stuff to "just work" the way it used to.

ok I have had it with apple. I have owned only apple electronics, probably 25+ apple products over the last 10 years but they are becoming worse and worse. List of issues that **** me off about this company:

1)"waiting for all changes to be applied." The first person trying to help should be an apple employee not some other customer. And I should not need to go through 15 steps to get my $700 phone to sync.

2) Why when I search my contacts, is there 10+ copies of each contact. My brother in law who worked at apple couldn't even explain how this happens

3) Why is it possible for iCloud.com, me.com, apple.com each to have a different frickin password. Ridiculous.

4) why does upgrading software on an older model slow it down? couldn't have anything to do with pushing you to buy the newest phone.

I don't want to waste any more of my time writing about this crap but I have completely had it with this company. Glad I sold the stock when it hit its peak, cuz it's never getting there again. At least not with the crack designers putting out nerdy stuff like the apple watch.

cpaulPHL

Thanks for a very comprehensive attempt at solving this huge Apple problem (600+ posts).

I chose one thing out of your comprehensive list - unchecking Voice memos before sync. Then iTunes no longer got stuck on "Waiting for changes to be applied" (Step 3 of my sync). However, I then got stuck on "Waiting for files to copy" (Step 7 for my sync). Back to the drawing board...

...my back to the drawing board approach was to notice that there was an iTunes update 12.3.0.44 http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ .

Downloaded, installed and applied. Then synced and the "Waiting for files to copy" error disappeared and I got a full sync without problems. I also had had one of the hard disk errors at times:

'Attempting to copy to the disk "Macintosh HD" failed. An unknown error occurred (-4).'

, but not this time. I then rechecked Voice memos, synced and the 'stuck on waiting for changes to be applied' error did not recur.

All good, and only the standard IT help disk response (after switch off and on) - always update the software.