Someone solve my problem for me.

[foxgrrl]

I seriously just don't have time for this… When I plug my iPhone in, it goes:

iTunes could not sync contacts to the iPhone "Julia's iPhone" because the sync server failed to sync the iPhone.

… and of course, doesn't sync anything. All of the advice I can find about it on Google are LIES! FILTHY LIES! So to save you some time; I'm not running exchange or Yahoo anything. I've completely wiped my phone to factory settings — leaving it in a even less useful state than before &mdash erasing all of my contacts with the OSX Address Book utility, and Reset Sync History in iSync.

Here's a clue no one else seems to have noticed so far:

2007-09-19 01:58:09.754 AddressBookSync[6257] CFLog (0): 
	CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
	/Users/julia/Library/Application Support/SyncServices/Local/clientdata/0063006f006d002e006100700070006c0065002e00410064006400720065007300730042006f006f006b/004100420053004c00610073007400530079006e00630044006100740065
	The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
2007-09-19 01:58:09.765 AddressBookSync[6257] AddressBookSync (client id: com.apple.AddressBook) error: Exception running AddressBookSync: *** -[NSKeyedUnarchiver initForReadingWithData:]: incomprehensible archive (0xffffff89, 0x3a, 0xffffff94, 0xfffffffc, 0x18, 0xffffffb6, 0x55, 0xffffff9a)

Comments

[kengr]

I think that means that it doesn't like a non-ASCII character in your phonebook. :-(

note to self: reply to post, not to comment :P

[tenbris.livejournal.com]

On the off chance that the AddressBookSync is borked... If you have the OSX install disk 1 handy dl Pacifist Click "Open Apple Install Packages". It takes a while to load but search for AddressBookSync and you can install it to the right place from there. Probably a wild goose chase but it's worth a shot.

-e

and that link would be...

[tenbris.livejournal.com]

for Pacifist: http://www.charlessoft.com/

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

Apple commercials and their hipster spokesman assured me that their products don't give cryptic error messages, and "Just work" not like those vile PC things that only corporate accountants and basement dwelling D&D nerds use.

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry about your phone! *hugs*

I wish I could help you out.

[ctuck.livejournal.com]

I think everyone is on the right page with the bad character in your Address Book file. There is a chance you didn't put it there too... sort of sucks, right? Obviously, make sure you have all the latest updates. Have you run Repair Disk Permissions from Disk Utilities (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utilities). This is the first line of troubleshooting for OS X. Atleast in my book.

[aaron-raccoon.livejournal.com]

From what I've heard the iPhone has a way to go for it to become stable. I know one crashed when it received an email from the Debian security mailing list and there seems to be a number of other crashes. There's no excuse for it to crash, even with bad data. If it crashes like this, it only makes it easier down the road to hack it. Assuming they handle unicode, they should be able to handle bad characters.

I also understand that most apps on the iPhone run with root privileges.

[3ricj.livejournal.com]

as it's Sept 19th, use this: http://arrsync.sourceforge.net/

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Latest version of iTunes?

[hasufin.livejournal.com]

I've been too long out of coding to even begin to guess.

But - could I prevail upon you to put that bit of code behind a cut? It's slaughtering the formatting of my friends page, and horizontal scrolling is evil.

[foxgrrl]

Nope, got 7.4.2 (4) already. The last few version have been like this, it started back in July with the 10.4.10 upgrade.

Re: and that link would be...

[foxgrrl]

Re-Installed. Didn't work.

[foxgrrl]

Ran both Verify Disk Permissions, and Verify Disk. Both were ok. I nuked all of my actual Address Book data already. (It's empty). (Latest updates too and everything.)

[foxgrrl]

I completely wiped all of the data off the phone, and restored it to the factory settings. I even needed to re-activate it. Didn't make any difference.

[foxgrrl]

It's always the same error 100% of the time. And I can sync MP3s and Photos just fine. Noting about glitchy I/O ports is showing up in the system logs — which I know Linux always logs, not sure about Darwin/OSX. This doesn't match the pattern for silent random corruption.