OK, WTF APPLE! Now I have hated Apple’s sync to iPhone since Apple Music came around and music sync was moved to the finder. Not only is it super clunky and slow as all hell, you can’t force quit the process like you could by quiting iTunes, so I had to turn off automatic wifi sync when device plugged into power because it literally meant I could not restart my computer if something went wrong until sync was done.

And it was just weird to have sync in the finder, since you deal with your music and playlists in Music, why not have sync there? It just seems arbitrary, but it also never worked well.

I could not just sync music to my iPhone or iPad, I have to let the iPhone backup first, because any changes I make in the sync before a first sync finishes, just get completely ignored. And if this is the case, it shouldn’t let you make changes until the sync was completed! WTF!

And now with Mac OS Ventura’s 13.3 Update, things have gotten much weirder. iPad sync remains the same, where if I plug in my iPad, it shows up in the finder (and I have to go through trust issues with my phone and mac which I can’t seem to ever remedy no matter how many times I reset network settings). and it syncs, and there is at least something in the side of the finder showing something is going on.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the iPhone. I thought something was wrong with my iPhone when I tried to sync it after the update as it would not show up in the finder. Eventually I looked in Music and it does show up there.

So I said what the heck and clicked on the phone there and it gave a new window with a new button.

So it looks to be listing all music on my iPhone (quite a bit), but there is a button on the right hand side that says Sync Settings. And when I hit it, a finder window opens up with the previous iPhone Finder window allowing sync, the problem is that it doesn’t show up at all in the sidebar. So who knows where this window is supposed to be.

As you can see it doesn’t show up on the left hand side at all, so it’s initial sync, which takes a while, has absolutely nothing showing progress in the finder, which sync with the iPad shows. To see where it is, you have to go back to Music.

And once that finished you can then watch progress in the finder window on the initial sync it must do before you can sync any music to your iPhone.

So once this initial backup finishes I can make changes to the music on my iPhone, but only in this window, and as you can see my iPad shows up in the Sidebar, but not my iPhone.

I can only think that is this is a mistake. You want Sync to be in one place, not having to go back and forth between Music and the Finder to get a sync going.

And all I can think is that most people are using streaming music and not their own music (they must not have a huge library of Grateful Dead Live music), so they haven’t noticed this abomination that has happened for just the iPhone in Ventura 13.3.

I also posted at Apple’s support community, but I am pretty sure they don’t read their support community, so problematically they might not realize it is a problem. And I have reported it as a bug in Apple Feedback.