Waiting for changes to be applied...

This is the second time you have gotten it to work temporarily, correct.

I can get mine to work about 1 in 10 or 12 times.

Interestingly enough, I endured the same issues. Here are some of the steps I performed to reproduce a solution:

- Connect the iDevice to your computer using USB.

- Navigate to your iDevice and to the Music tab.

- Ensure all songs that are manually added to the device are moved. Note you may still not be able to sync this change.

- In my case, it appeared as though there were photos that were halting the sync process. If you sync your device with iPhoto, attempt to update iPhoto by syncing any missing photos.

- Attempt to sync again.

Good luck!

Another note, sometimes the failure to sync is caused by Automatic Downloads being enabled on your iDevice and if there are any incomplete downloads appearing in the iTunes Store.

I may have narrowed it down the what the problem is. iTunes is not dealing with DRM restrictions well.

Workarounds first, if you are having sync problems with iTunes 11.1.x:

- Do not try to sync audiobooks with DRM restrictions.

- Use Audible.app to download the books & play them for Audible books.

- Use Overdrive.app to download the books & play books from your library checked out from your public library with Overdrive.

- Do not try to transfer the books with Overdrive Media Console if it fails.

- Books without DRM restrictions will sync with iTunes 11.1.x, IF there are no books with DRM restrictions in the sync.

This will require a bug fix from Apple.

Now, how I came to those conclusions.

iTunes 11.1 & iTunes 11.1.1 are having problems syncing audiobooks to iPhones. I worked with an Apple Senior Advisor and having information sent to their Engineers, for 2 weeks with no resolution or narrowing of the issue.Myself and a several other users have narrowed it down to the DRM restrictions on these books that is causing the problem. I have been following several threads here and elsewhere for weeks.

When I try to sync audiobooks to my iPhone 4S, if there is an Audible audiobook in the sync, it will fail. What happens is that in the next to last step, iTunes hangs and 9 times out of 10, it will self cancel the sync. On the one time it does complete, it will have failed to move the books over to the iPhone. It is even worse on my iPhone 3GS.

If I download a book from the public library with Overdrive and then try to use Overdrive Media Console to transfer the audiobook to iTunes and from there to the iPhone it will fail. The DRM restrictions in OMC are causing the problem during the transfer.

The DRM restrictions that are causing the problems.

I can transfer all the audiobooks I have if there are no DRM restrictions on them, unless there is one with DRM restrictions in the batch to be sync'd.

Brent

MacBook Pro, OS X 10.7.5, iTunes 11.1.1

iPhone 4S, iOS 7.0.2

iPhone 3GS, iOS 6.1.3

Nancy,

I understand your frustration, but I will say it again, if you want immediate help from Apple, call AppleCare or go to the Genius Bar. If you want immediate fixes, then don't be an early adopter of new software. Wait until the bugs are worked out.

In this case the problem has to be narrowed and defined, and it will require an update from Apple. This is a community discussion, not an Apple help line.

As I said I worked with Apple for 2 weeks, and we were not able to even narrow it down. Users here and elsewhere helped me to narrow it down.

Now if you ask me if I am upset with Apple, I will say, yes. Not because of the bug or the expected delay before they release a fix. Apple won't ever speak in advance of bugs, bug fixes, new products, malware or anything of the kind.

I am upset with Apple, because 3 AppleCare Senior advisors, did not have the courtesy of acknowledging my emails to update things in my case. Not even when I emailed them the conclusion that the issues is with iTunes and DRM restriction. All 3 had given me their contact information so we could follow up. I wasn't asking for anything that Apple by policy will not talk about, just that they acknowledge the updates I sent in by email.

Well in Alan!

I've had this issue after updates in the past, and again today - the primary issue seems to be that Apple doesn't actually tell you what's going on in the background. Generally with these updates all of the content is removed from the device and it takes a while to index everything that must then be copied back onto the phone - if you wait long enough eventually your entire music library will begin to copy from scratch. If Apple wants to fix this problem they should institute a progress bar rather than a candy stripe, and give feedback about what is being done - then people would tolerate the fact that it can take an hour for a large device to go through all the content.

Thank you this finally worked for me. I am adding all my music slowly so that it doesn't get stuck on "waiting for changes to be applied" and so far it's working.

Update: By what's happening to me so far, the more music you try to add, the longer the "waiting for changes to be applied" takes. Im adding my music at about 400 songs at a time.

This problem keeps reappearing for me, despite the (temporary) fixes. iTunes 11.1.2, iOS 7.0.3.

I could not back up my iPad mini(iOS 7.0.3) either with WIFI or USB to my iMac (Mavericks 10.9)

I had already tried other posted suggestions, including

1. turning off find my ipad

2. turning off automatic backup

3. turning off backup via wifi

So in addition to 1,2,& 3 above i followed Alan Mays suggestion and

Turned OFF EVERYTHING RELATED TO PASS CODES.

I also did a cold reboot just in case.

I reconnected to USB with iMac and did manual backup.

It worked.....at least for now.....

Thanks everyone. You're more help that Apple Support.

tbsdca,

The normal pattern to clear these problems is to Restart, Reset, & Restore.

- Restart (turn off the device, then do a cold boot),

- Reset (for an iPhone, that is hold the top button and the home button down, until it shuts down, it will restart with not lose of data),

- sometimes ther are other options,

- Restore, after manually backing up, you may have to sync to get your stuff back on it, and may have to re-download apps.

There is a lot of suggested voodoo out there right now, and it seems to work for some as well as the normal stuff, right now.

Brent

I moved to iTunes 11.1.3, and now I am getting the "waiting to copy" hang. For an incremental sync, one that is just adding or removing a couple of item, as opposed to having to sync everything like after a Restore. It is taking 15 to 20 minutes to sync a single large audiobook (20 hour play time). I lad my last sync run for 36 minutes before force quiting it.

It takes as long to remove a audiobook as it does to add the same, and if you force quit a hung sync, you take the risk of loosing the use of that content space until your next Restore. (Geez, this sounds like having to re-install Windows.)

You know if the major updates are going to be this rough and ragged in the future, I'd rather wait a year or two in between.

One good thing, "Chapters" is now working for imported CD audiobooks. I can now see the segment marked by chapter-marks, and the scrub bar is now working for those segments. It is not working for Audible.com books, as I just verified with their IT support department.

After a grueling 2 months of the same (even after I changed the phone to a new one and still did the "waiting for changes to be applied" and deleted almost all my music) I did the unthinkable. Having an external Hard Drive, I decided to erase my MacBook Pro and do a fresh install. And after that I did the same to my iPhone 5 (a clean install with ought backup) it worked perfectly and so far it hasn't given me any problems at all.

Note: Before you delete your computer (remember, get a hard drive with ought it, you won't be getting your stuff back) go to the iTunes folder on your MacBook, and get all the folders that are inside it and pull them separately to your external hard drive (Ex. Music, Podcasts, apps, etc.) It's tough but in the end I got all my stuff back to normal.

If you just grab the iTunes Media folder and put it back on your computer after you did the clean install with ought pulling every folder inside it separately it will be stuck again and it will be a complete waste of time and you have to do the clean install again. (Learned it the hard way, trust me)

I wish I had seen Nancy's solution earlier because this is exactly what I ended up doing after days of trying other solutions. But setting up my phone as a new phone and then re-installing all my stuff seems to have fixed the issue for me, at least for the last several days.

I wonder if my issue was that I had set up each new iPhone using the backup from the prior one, all the way back to 2008, and there was some kind of stale data or settings cruft that managed to creep in? Anyway, well done Nancy.

Nancy Trainer wrote:

I really don't appreciate the fact that no one from Apple seems to be dealing with the many, many threads that have started on this topic since iOS 7 came out. In any event, I seem to have solved my problem with a full software restoration -- that is, iOS software restoration.

I clicked on "Restore iPhone..." which does a complete reinstall of the iOS but also all apps, photos, songs, etc. Took about 45 minutes, but seems to have worked.

I had previously tried reverting to a backup of my iPhone, but that did not solve the problem. Only a full restore solved it.