iTunes 12.2 sync still badly broken

Syncing content with iOS devices has been broken for years, and every time there's a new release I hope that it will be fixed, only to have those dashed. They seem more intent on changing the UI (usually by removing features) than actually fixing the darn thing.

But tonight, with both 12.2 and iOS 8.4, after a failed sync (stuck for a *long* time on 'waiting for items to copy'), I discovered that all of my music, movies and TV shows had been removed from the iPad after attempting to sync it (it failed, I restarted the iPad and iTunes, and poof, it's all gone). Now I'm faced with an hours-long reload....hopefully it will actually work.

I know Apple is all about the cloud, but streaming playback isn't an option for most of us outside Silicon Valley where they have multiple uncapped gigabit connection options. We work remotely on slow connections, watch content in flight, or mobile hotspots, so syncing content direct from the library is our only viable option.

iBooks randomly deleted my books so many times that I stopped using it (and buying content from Apple), and switched to Kindle. Not only is it cheaper, but at least I don't have my books disappear right before a 12 hour flight! So poor app quality Apple ongoing revenue. I was just about to convert all my audiobooks back to music tracks to avoid having to use iBooks to listen to them, when this happened, so now I'm really out of luck. At this point, if there were a competitive option for offline music and video, I'd switch in a heartbeat.

They make great hardware, but their software quality, frankly, is the pits.

Supposedly iOS 9 and OSX 10.11 are 'snow' releases to stabilize the software. iTunes desperately needs to be added to that list. At this point I'd like to see Apple stop work on any and all new features and just spend 6 months getting us back to a point where 'things just work'.