iPhone keeps disconnecting from Mac

I have this problem with a 1 year old MacBook Air & Retina iPad Mini. It occurred with a genuine Apple lightning cable, I tried rebooting both devices, no help. And never had this problem with an iPhone, either 5, 5s, 4s, or iPods.

Finally I switched to another Apple USB cable, and it worked for a moment then stopped. Finally I switched to a pretty new Amazon cable and it worked fine. But when I disconnected, then brought the iPad back an hour later, suddenly I get the repeating connect/disconnect sequence. If I switch the cable to the other USB port it connects fine. When the bad connections occur I get lots of these errors in Console.

11/5/14 7:53:32.000 PM kernel[0]: Sandbox: com.apple.Safari(3833) deny file-read-data /

Wow... so I also tried everything posted here, but after wiggling the USB cable (end connected to my mac) around, and nudging it around... it connected. No idea why. Weirdly, the iPad works with the same cable perfectly on my PC, and my iPhone works with the cable too on PC and Mac. Right...😕

I have the same problem with my iMac 21.5 2013. My iPad air and iPhone 6 still won't connect, i've used 4 apple USB cables and 3 amazon cable and nothing works. Any solutions?

Running OS X YOSEMITE v. 10.10.1

The same problem. MBA 2013 + iPhone 5S.

I've googled this issue and the are TONS of people who are having it. Just look at the number of views of this post.

It seems it can happen to any iOS device connected by any cable (lightning or 30-pin) to a computer with any operation system. And it happens since like the beginning of iOS (I've found posts published in 2008). And there is no solution, just some guesses none of which worked for me.

Apple, what the heck? Are you gonna do something about it?

it is a cable recognition issue.

keep swapping cables to powered ports and the error will not occur.

i was using a keyboard port which was underpowered(overcorrect drawn0 but no current warning occurred..just the MXUSB error

switched to a powered hub and no problem

i am using a non apple micro usb to a battery back charger so apple certified seems not to be the issue

it is under powered usb ports

repair permission

This working for me!!! it was so annoying!! I thought it was hardware problem.

I had many lightning cable but won't work,

MBPr 15" late 2013, the port near the card reader does work for my iPad but the one next the magsafe not working.

keep disconnect within a sec, but that port works for my phone 6plus.

after repaired the permission it works again!

nopes- Didn't work for me.

My iPad Air is still connecting/disconnecting from my iMac.

But there's something else. When my iPad is in this loop trying to connect and then I connect my iphone 6 to the mac, the iPad connects!!!

This problem had progressed to where I could not charge any device from either USB port on my MacBook Air (cable didn't matter, devices would charge fine from a wall charger).

I just ran Disk Utility - Repair Disk Permissions and both ports now work perfectly, no more charging issues. No idea why, but I am very, very relieved.

THANK YOU.

The solutions presented here are only temporary fixes. They've stopped working for me all together.

APPLE FIX THIS PROBLEM!!! I'm an iPad developer and I can't develop on my MacBook Air because of this!

Any solutions yet any one ? above solutions do not work for me only problems with iPad air to be honest tried repair disk permissions reset settings in iPad restored iPad through iTunes same problem immediately . Keep disconnecting/ reconnecting rapidly !

HI,

I have the same problem. Brand new Macbook Air (august 2015) and iPad Air. Have tried several cables and all the fixes here. none work. 😟 Strange thing is that the same cable works on an old iPhone 5. please help!

Regards,

Markus

This is really frustrating!! Plugged in for the first time after Mavericks update, to get a back up of my iPad Air and the crazy stuff happened.

I tried everything mentioned here - from changing cables, repairing disk permission to resetting privacy, network etc. etc.....

But what worked for me was to use a USB hub in between my iPad and my Macbook Pro - suddenly it worked like magic and from a wild horse hopping around crazily, connecting and disconnecting, my iPad went back to its old tame self and meekly surrendered to iTunes :-)

Hope it works for others as well....and Apple does something about it.

Hi,

I have the same problem with 2014 Macbook pro + iPad Air 2.

The laptop works fine with older iPad 1

The Air 2 works fine with older 2012 Mb pro

The problem is intermittent so sometimes iPad connects. In the beginning it connected in 1 of 2 attempts now it does in 1 of 20 so the problem seems to be worsening with time. What is also bad is that after iPad is connected, laptop's keyboard and trackpad stop responding until I insert something else in another USB socket. Laptop's system log contain all these usbmuxd AMDNotificationFacepalm messages that are completely useless. I think it is a hardware/firmware bug in laptop's USB controller, somehow related to USB charge current.

I do not really need to charge the iPad from USB but at least I need it to connect because I am iOS developer. This bug is really frustrating especially because there is no easy way to repair/replace Apple stuff in my country.

The following suggestions did not help:

1. Resetting the iPad

2. Restarting the laptop

3. Resetting SMC

4. Resetting Locations and Privacy settings on iPad

5. Using different USB cables, "original' and non-"original"

6. Quitting iTunes and iTunes helper

7. Deleting files from /var/db/lockdown

8. Quitting VMWare Fusion

9. Moving USB cable in a socket or inserting it slowly (it helped once)

Here is what helped:

10. Use USB hub.

iPad does not charge from the hub but at least it can sync and exchange data.

I hope this info will help somebody.

Best regards,

Bob

Ukraine

Someone on this thread had the right idea. The problem appears to be with iPad drawing too much current for the mac to handle, so one of them disconnects. (I think the Mac kills the power).

Also, the iPad must be drawing a variable amperage depending on how much battery is left. A battery with 10% on it will draw more current than 80%. And that seems to be what triggers the mac to kill power, disconnects the ipad, which tries to reconnect and goes into an infinite loop. That would explain why switching a cable seems to work "sometimes" - it's a red herring.

I charged my iPad air II on MBP 2015 from 8% to 75%. Without issue. Then I could charge it from 75% to 100% on the iMac 2014. Where as a discharged iPad would go into an infinite connect/disconnect cycle.

It's very unfortunate that the USB ports on the back of iMac are not designed to generate the right amount of current.

I had this problem and it was very odd in the way it suddenly appeared. After much googling with no definitive answers I ended up fixing it by slightly pressing (and bending) the hollow side of the USB plug to make sure it grips onto the connectors properly. This has completely fixed it for me. I would suggest anyone with this problem should investigate cabling, especially how well the USB plug sits inside the USB port of the computer.