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

I have POKER JOURNAL as well.  This must be the issue.  How interesting is that?

There is a whole thread in the 2+2 forums about this ios8 issue with poker journal  -- http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/45/software/poker-journal-app-ios8-iphone-prob lems-1475606/  and if you look at the app reviews in the app store there are a bunch of complaints about it as well. 

Clearly you want to delete the app off the phone/ipad before doing the upgrade, I am not sure if deleting it off the computer before trying a restore will allow the restore to work correctly or not. 

Off topic but I just installed Poker Income Pro to use going forward.  Not as pretty as poker journal but it is supported and works in ios8.

After trial and error I switched the USB port that i was plugged into and it worked.

I'm also having this problem. Frankly shows what a joke so called Apple reliability is. I've lost count of the days of time I've lost over the years trying to get iTunes to work with new versions of iOS or new iPhones/iPads

Even its backup system is a sick joke. Apple have known for years that backups can get corrupted but because they do not appear to verify their backups or give its users the specific option to verify - you will not find out a backup is useless until you need to use it.

And on it goes, year after year after year - why do we bother to stay loyal to Apple? Its the same old crass cynicism - beta test through the early adopters and carry on with the same old iTunes that's been broken for years. This will almost certainly be my last iPhone upgrade - at least with Android you are not forced to stay with a broken system like iTunes.

It seems that iCloud Drive is the culprit. Once I turned off iCloud Drive my sync went through like a charm.

bro, I just created a discussions account just to thank you.  I had Poker Journal too, I then un-installed it (deleting direct off iPhone) - and it started to sync instantly! wow!

But before I could pop the champange, it stalled on another app Audio Concise Oxford English Dictionary - I have now deleted this too. and now has done a full sync.

I'm guessing that the problem isn't just with these apps, but many apps, and it just a trail and error, lucky or unlucky thing.  - however the problem seems to be  certain apps not being compatible.

Anyways, thanks again, for helping me isolate.

I'm so often a lurker on forums like this, but this fix is so ridiculous that I had to post to confirm.  I also have Poker Journal.  I had tried everything...multiple restores, different backup restores, stripping out voice memos from my syncs, then music files, then photos, then videos, then apps.....

I was FINALLY able to sync when I stripped out apps and I started adding multiple apps at a time to figure out what was going on.  I was going insane.  Then I came across this thread and I synced all apps (but only apps) EXCEPT for Poker Journal.  Sure enough, this worked.  I was super tilted after all this, but relieved so I'll let it go.  After that success I added back in my large music library (still have videos, photos and voice memos stripped out), and the sync is finally going.  It hung onto the "waiting for changes to be applied for about 10min or so, but now it is finally copying over my music library.  I'll try out the rest in the morning, but time to sink into a deep, peaceful sleep............

I fixed the issue last night by updating apps through iTunes. I had over 100 apps that needed to be update. After updating them everything started to sync like it was supposed. The weird thing is that the updates never showed up in the app store on my iPod.

I tried countless times but itunes was hanging on "waiting for changes to be applied" for more than 30 mins. The solution: uncheck "Sync with this Phone over Wi-Fi". And then sync worked normally. Finally.

note: this was an iPhone 6 on ioS 8.0.2. and I did not use the original lightning cable. (it isn't necessary)

Try a reboot hold down power button & menu button hold both down until you see Apple Logo then wait. Bsydd uk

What worked for me was updating all apps in iTunes on my computer (as someone else mentioned).  I think it used to be that if you updated them on your device, it would update in iTunes when you did a sync.  That doesn't happen now.  There appear to be several causes of this issue (last year I found it was caused by a tv show that had been added directly to the iPad but not iTunes) but i've not found anything from Apple...

I purchased a new iPhone 6 128GB over the weekend. I setup the new iPhone from scratch, however transferring my music files of 12,000 tracks and photos of around 5,000 images via iTunes 12 took over 10 sync attempts over 30 hours.

I tried numerous changes such as:

• Disabling Find My Friends on the iPhone
• Disabling iCloud Drive on the iPhone
• Deleting all voice memos from my iTunes library
• Disabling "Include voice memos" in Sync Music settings
  
• Disabling tones in Sync Tones settings
• Enabling "Sync with this iPhone over Wi-Fi"
• Enabling "Sync only checked songs and videos"

My iTunes Library was many years old so I followed a suggestion to recreate it from the iTunes Music Library.xml file. This seems to have fixed any orphaned files referenced in my iTunes Library and the sync of 40gb of music and photos completed successfully overnight after 8 hours.