Takes two tries for my Wife's iPhone 15 Pro Max to backup and sync with her 2024 MBA

[Rod]

My wife regularly syncs and backs up her iPhone to her MBA. She uses the provided Apple USB-C to USB-C cable plugged directly into the port of the MBA, both devices are running the latest OS.

Every time she does this it stalls halfway through requiring her to stop the process (a time consuming act in itself) eject the iPhone and start the process again. Initially the window shows the iPhone with the "barber pole" progress line for some time;



Then she receives this message;



The second time she tries it works, every time;


Yes, it did ask the "allow this accessory to connect" the first time she did this with the new MBA . She seems to be doing all of the right things, I've tried it myself with the same result.
It's turned what should be a set an forget process, like while your having a shower, into a long involved one requiring that she sit and wait for it to fail before aborting and trying again.

The tracks that the progress bar refers to are Talking Books, as distinct from Audio Books (seperate app), these tracks are from an online subscription audio library and can only be added to Music, she does not sync her music so only those tracks are ticked in the Music app. It worked fine before iTunes got split up into it's various components. The Audio Books app is now pretty much useless except for buying Audio Books from Apple.

I might add that this has been happening for some time even with her previous laptop.

Any help would be greatly appreciated by us both.

 

[ferrarr]

Have you tried to backup the iPhone before syncing?
Did it happen with previous iPhone versions as well?
Can you test by backing up her iPhone, to your MBP?

 

[Rod]

Yes, yes and no, haven’t tried that. Not sure what that would prove though plus she’s got 500GB of storage. Her current data exceeds my free storage.

 

[ferrarr]

I meant Sync to your MBP, not backup. Or create a new user account on her MBA and test to see if it syncs without an issue?

 

[Rod]

Okay, yep I can try that.

 

[Rod]

Nope, that didn't work either

 

[Rod]

I think this might be a more common problem than we know because most people don't sync via cable much these days. They download media direct to thier phone and backup to iCloud witelessly.

 

[MacInWin]

Rod, I have not commented on this thread, but the process works for me flawlessly, every time. No stalls. I have no suggestions, just wanted to say that the process with a cable DOES work. I know that's not much help, sorry.

 

[Jimmysb]

So my back-ups are normally wireless, but I need to connect my new iPad by cable initially to enable wifi, and had no issues backing up.

 

[IWT]

I know how infuriating it is when person after person says “it works for me”. I could add my name to that list, but I do have one suggestion which affected me a few months ago When my sync to my Mac seemed to take forever.

Try a new or different cable. This solved my problem. Maybe it might help yours.

Ian

 

[Rod]

Ian, we did try that but came up with a lateral idea. Subscribe to iTunes Match. That way all music in the Music app is available to all devices via iCloud completely negating the need to sync at all. Annie can just select what she wants to download onto her iPhone from the Music app (the rest remain greyed out) just like iCloud Drive in the Files App.
After she's listened to the book she can just delete it on the iPhone and on her MBA too if she wants.

 

[IWT]

Good point, good suggestion, Rod.

I too have iTunes Match, which I’ve had for ”ever” it seems. I had forgotten all about that because it just works as you indicated.

In general, though, I think that slow or broken syncs is often the result of a damaged or “tired out” cable. They are cheap enough to replace.

Ian