iOS 17.2 sync is broken

TidBITS Talk
21

This is on principle, right? You do realize that 50GB will cost you $12/year.

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22

not entirely on principle: i’m already paying over $100/year for hosting. get unlimited gb from that. but i also prefer to have my data on my disks.

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23

The problem with cloud storage isn’t the price. It’s the fact that you aren’t in control over it. Unless you’re paying a lot of money for enterprise-level service, you have no clue (and absolutely no guarantees) regarding:

  • Redundancy
  • Availability
  • Backups

You may well find that your data is unavailable when you need it.

By all means use cloud storage as one (among several) backup mechanisms, but make sure your master copy is kept local somewhere, and make sure you have at least one local backup as well.

If this means you need to buy a few more USB/TB storage devices or a NAS, then so be it. It’s far better than finding that your cloud provider is going away (or is otherwise choosing to shut down your account) and you now need to download everything on an impossible schedule to avoid losing your data.

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24

in theory, icloud is supposed to eliminate the issues you list. in practice, it’s an overpriced, badly designed, opaque service. however, since apple is minting money from it, it’s unlikely to just abruptly disappear.

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25

it was. thanks david.

but even with that trick, it takes multiple attempts just to get the phone to sync tracks to the computer. no idea what the appletards busted this time but it really is disheartening to have to deal with the continued enshittification of their entire product line.

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26

Another data point:

  • iPhone SE Rev 3, iOS 17.2.1
  • macOS 10.14.6 (Mojave), running iTunes 12.9.5.5
  • Syncing via USB cable; no syncing done to iCloud

After passcode entered, everything syncs fine: backup, calendar, playlists (probably about 300 of them). Changes are propagated back and forth successfully.

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27

difference is you’re running an elderly version of osx. reinforces the notion that the bug lies in 14.2.1 (aka osx19.2.1) or music 1.4.2.83 (“Apple describes the Music app as a ‘music streaming experience,’” which is probably why they busted sync: they just don’t care).

thanks for the data point.

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28

Syncing iPhone 12 with Ventura was hung at waiting for sync. Killed the process IIRC called MDCrashReportTool after finding something about it on Reddit. Synced immediately.

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29

In theory, they all offer this. But in practice, it’s not perfect.

If you’re an enterprise customer, you can sign a contract with an SLA that legally obligates them for a certain level of service and has enforceable penalties if they fail to deliver. But if you’re any other kind of customer, there are no guarantees whatsoever.

And in all cases, you should never trust them. Even with an SLA, things can go wrong and a payout (even a large one) won’t help you recover lost data. So you should always have your own local storage and backups.

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30

confirmed. had to kill finder and music. then it synced upon restarting finder.

the other thing is although i clicked [sync], it still attempts to backup the device. the [backup now] button is just a placebo? or i’m missing yet another trick?

31

My experience (Sonoma) is that the Backup button simply performs a backup (labeled as Step 2 of 2 IIRC); nothing else. Which actually works for me, at least.

The Sync button performs first a backup (as Step 2), then tries to do syncing (Step 3 and beyond). And while the backup runs fine, it’s Step 3 of 5 (the first of several sync steps) that stalls indefinitely. Trying to use the X button associated with the device doesn’t do anything. Physically disconnecting the USB cable between the iPhone and Mac does stop the infinite tries to sync.

I haven’t been able to determine what’s actually trying to sync in Step 3. Could be Music, Photos, or Books. One of the things one of the Apple Support folks I’ve been trying to work with mentioned Camera Roll, but I’m not sure that’s what’s trying to happen. FYI, among the various sync settings, I don’t explicitly specify synching Photos, but do explicitly specify synching Music and Books (both ebooks and PDFS).

IIRC correctly – back when my iPhone-to-Mac backups actually work, subsequent Steps involved copying individual Books, Music, etc. over to the iPhone.

After trying quite a variety of different settings in Sonoma (with restarting both the Mac and iPhone between setting changes)-- and coming up empty, the iPhone syncing still stalls in Step 3 – I’m taking a break over the Christmas weekend. For myself & Apple Support. I’ll be re-staring my chasing the same case with them come Tuesday.

Bob

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32

Having the same sync hanging problems with iPhone 13 mini, iOS 17.2.1 and Mac Mini M2 Pro Ventura 13.6.1. Syncing works on older iPad and newer iPad Pro both up to date software.

I’m writing to reinforce that killing the MDCrashReportTool process in Activity Monitor stops the sync from its hung state and allows the Finder to present the normal information screen. Of course when I try to deselect the ‘Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected’ option, and hit Apply, it tries to sync and hangs again. After rebooting the phone and reconnecting to the Mac the Finder no longer attempts to sync so at least that is a step forward! Of course, if I hit the Sync button at the bottom of the screen it hangs again.

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33

thanks for that @jaclay! killed MDCrashReportTool and the sync then quickly completed. be better that apple fixed whatever they broke but i’ll take this; a usable solution.

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34

Ran into this issue again today (iPhone 15 on 17.2.1, 14" MBP on 14.2.1). Did not find the MDCrashReportTool process or anything similar running. Restarting Finder did not help. However, logging out and back in again allowed the sync to go through. So my hunt for the process causing this baloney continues…

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35

mdcrashreporttool is started by step 3 of 5 (regardless if you skip backups). that’s where sync always hangs for me. it appears to reliably (apologise for the curious use of the word “reliably”) be the cause of the problem.

other sites, including the normally worthless apple support forums appear to agree that it’s the cause of this sync failure. apparently afflicting windows systems as well as apple.

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36

Confirming that finding and force-quitting an active MDCrashReportTool process will allow sync’ing (Step 3 of 5) to continue.

FYI, it can be awkward to actually find that process. Start Activity Monitor and click on the CPU tab, then search for MDCrash. When you see a line showing the process, double-click on it to get a popup with some options, including Quit and Force Quit. Click on Force Quit.

I’m now wondering if it’s on the Mac (in Sonoma 14.2.1 and possibly earier versions?) rather than iOS 17.2 where there’s a bug causing MDCrashReportTool (and thus the sync process) to hang.

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37

there are lots of complaints on various forums that you have to kill mdcrashreporttool.exe to sync your phone to windows machines. apparently some lousy coder in cupertino busted the process for both windows and osx.

question is: will they fix it before the heat death of the universe? my cynical vote (based on past form) is no they won’t cuz it doesn’t affect their services revenue.

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38

Hey, thanks all! Can confirm that killing MDCrashReportTool works. Now to hack up a launchd job to automate doing this regularly, so my syncs just happen and I don’t walk out the door to find my latest audiobooks haven’t synced again …

Turning on iCloud backups makes the passcode prompt go away, yes, because local backup only triggers when iCloud Backup is off and the passcode prompt appears before every single backup. And in a sane world this would count as a bug and not a feature. To be clear, encrypted backups are streamed directly from the phone; an attacker can’t decrypt an intercepted phone backup when encrypted backups are already turned on, unless the password is weak. Apple could solve the problem of a weak password easily by requiring the user to confirm the password on both sides when they are set up, and by requiring passwords to have a guaranteed minimum entropy. But they don’t, because iCloud. Sigh. I can only speculate, but I think it’s pretty clear the shareholders have something to do with this, and that Apple are much more afraid of them than their own users. There might be scope for arguing that users can be coerced into setting up backup (think abusive partner), and these things are not to be dismissed, but it’s still a grubby move, for all that, and like I said, there’s no reason Apple can’t fix that with changes to iOS.

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39

I’ve also experienced this problem for maybe 5+ years now (on Macs), and IIRC, killing MDCrashReportTool has been the “fix” since the beginning…sigh…

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40

So I just had USB sync refuse to run again. “iPhone 15 cannot be found, error 50” or similar.

And just as I reported last time, this time again there was no MDCrashReporterTool listed as a process to force quit. There’s just nothing like that around on this Sonoma M1 MBP.

Relaunching Finder didn’t fix it either. In order to get syncing to start working again, I ended up having to log out and back in again. I sure wish I knew what process I could nuke to just get USB syncing to work again.

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