Q: waiting for changes to be applied/waiting for items to copy stuck during sync

I am having the exact same problem with my phone AND my iPad Air.

I have been on the phone with a senior person at Apple most of the day.  She is going to report this to their engineering managers and see what they say.  She is going to call me back on Monday or over the weekend.  If I hear anything, I will let you know.

I FIXED IT.  I manually went in to my phone and grabbed pretty much every app I ever downloaded.  After, I turned the phone off as well as my computer.  The first time I plugged in to iTunes, it flat out gave me an error message.  I tried a few more times and then BAM, it worked.  Once the sync is complete, I am going to delete the apps I don't want and sync again.  It should work.  Good Luck.

Same issue with my ipad 3.  Interrupted the ios8 upgrade.  Got ios8 on the device but when i tried to restore I tunes would hang on "waiting for items to copy".  Spent hours in online chat with 2 different Apple advisors and i think we may have got it fixed.   It all seems very voodoo-ish to me and I'm not sure what actually worked but i will put down the steps we did.

1.  In the Ipad- Erase all Content and Settings  (General/reset)

2.  Set up the ipad, connect to itunes, restore to the last (pre Ios upgrade) backup

3.  Ipad reboots (back to Hello screen), Itunes starts restore

4.  itunes gets to step 6-Waiting for items to copy and hangs

5.  Wait 4 hours  [probably not necessary, but wanted to give it a chance to work -- again)

6.  On Ipad, swipe teh hello screen and do initial setup.  You should see your apps grayed out with "waiting" underneath

6.  Eject the ipad via Itunes, wait 10 seconds and reconnect

7.  Ipad/itunes attempts to resync-- gets to step 6 and then hangs on "waiting for changes to be applied"

8.  In itunes, uncheck sync for movies, TV shows, Music, Books

9.  Hit apply

10.  In itunes go to the apps tab and hit the button that says "will install" (changing it to "install") for every app you had on the ipad.

11.  press sync.  At this point, not withstanding the fact that we just told it not to install all of the apps (i had almost 300--- way too many, should have deleted a bunch before the upgrade), Itunes started copying apps to the ipad.   They were all no longer in their folders, but they were installing and most importantly, all of the app data was intact 

The apps are all loading now and once they are done, I will make sure that itunes is not primed to remove them (the newly installed apps now have a "will remove" button next to them in Itunes) and i will then resynch, adding back music and videos.

This worked for me:

Solution 1: SYNC OVER WI-FI. Simply go into devices and see if "Sync with this iPhone over Wi-Fi" is checked off. If it's not, select it and hit apply. After that, restart iTunes and force quit if you have to. Then connect the computer and your iPhone to the same Wi-Fi network and reboot iTunes. (Without your iPhone 6 plugged in via lightning cable!!). Now attempt to sync. It will be slightly slower than directly connecting, but this seems to work OK. It will put all the music, apps and photos onto your new iPhone 6 and you'll be good to go.

Solution 2: DISABLE SYNC OVER WI-FI. If sync over Wi-FI is already checked off, uncheck it and hit Apply. Then restart as in Solution 1. But before you begin syncing by plugging in your lightning cable, turn the phone into Airplane Mode and turn WiFi off. This will make sure it definitely uses the cable and doesn't get confused and hang up. For many people, this little trick seems to work and all the apps will begin being synced.

Source: http://sitesdoneright.com/blog/2014/09/ios-8-iphone-6-waiting-for-apps-to-sync-i s-stuck

MY SOLUTION

My new iPhone6 plus and IOS 8  and iTunes.

1.Reboot Computer after  run disc utility verify repair permission.

2.RE-set iphone  delete erase data from the phone

3. start from scratch . set up as new iPhone .

4. phone start saying HELLO logo- start set up phone

   - phone ask  cloud back up > i choose iTunes backup (  you must have latest old iPhone back up)

   -phone ask me to plug in with iTunes.

4. plug in iphone to comupter open itunes.

5.  start sync.

6. i left it  and i left the desk.

KEY IS DO NOT TOUCH THE PHONE

USE ORIGINAL IPHONE SYNC USB CABLE

DO NOT TOUCH ITUNES

DO NOT CHANGE SETTING WHILE SYNCHING

DO NOT ATTEMP TO CHANGE ANY SETTING

JUST DO NOT TOUCH

OF COURSE IT  SYNC STUCK IN  " WAITING FOR ITEMS TO COPY"  FOR A WHILE.

SET ENERGY SAVING  COMPUTER SETTING - NEVER GO TO SLEEP NEVER DISPLY TO SLEEP. LEAVE COMPUTER ON.

AND IT WAS SUCCESS- NEXT SYNC WAS LIGHTING SPEEED.

The hang on sync can be avoided by updating all purchased apps before beginning the sync of a new iPhone 6.  With the current demand on Apple servers, updating your existing apps can take a couple of hours.  After the purchased apps have been updated, the sync process will load quickly without the hang experienced by many when apps are loading to the new phone from a previous iPhone generation backup.

Ok so once I got my Ipad working, being a glutton for punishment I went an upgraded my iPhone5s.   Well the upgrade failed and I had to go through the whole **** process several times to get my apps to download.  I followed the exact steps I outlined in my post above and they worked.  When I clicked on the "will install" button on every app I had installed on my iphone and then clicked apply, it started downloading almost all of my apps (95%) of them with my data intact (though my folder structure was gone). 

When I went to re-download/install the few missing apps, one of them wouldn't install.  I then searched the app (Poker Journal) out on some user forums and learned that everyone who had that app installed had the same ios8 update failure (and the subsequent headaches to get the phone/ipad working again).  Apparently there is some code in the app (which hasn't been supported by the developer for over a year) that not only will not work in iOs8, it crashes the whole OS upgrade process.  I'm not certain, but i suspect if I deleted the app from my computer and then did a restore to the pre-update backup it would work properly.  given the countless hours I have spent on getting my ipad and iPhone working though, i have no desire to try again.