iTunes - getting close to Hulk-smash....

[Darren S]

Chaps,

Are any of you a genius on iTunes? I've literally spent nearly three hours this afternoon trying to solve the issue we have with my girlfriend's Apple devices and it's driving me frigging insane. In a nutshell, we want to delete every bloody tune and start again. Balls to downloads and b****cks to any iCloud syncing, etc. Clean slate time.

Shelley has an iPhone 5 (though about two years ago, she had a 4S before going on a brief diversion to Android). However - and this is probably important to mention - the Apple ID she had then and now has always remained the same.

She has a MacBook Pro and now - a 6th gen Nano. However, we can get NO consistency on what tunes iTunes and the iPhone believes it has. Some screens refer to 250 purchases, yet the 'On This Device' tab within iTunes shows 412. The iPhone itself has no tunes on it, yet according to the break-down at the bottom of iTunes, it shows three tracks on there?

I've been ticking and unticking boxes like crazy. Applying changes, syncing changes, Purchases-only ticked, manually setting options - nothing. The best I can get is to highlight all of the tunes in her iTunes library and then delete the bloody things. That's fine, until you go anywhere near syncing the phone again where a phantom list of greyed-out 412 tunes appear yet again.

Logic dictates that you should be able to logon to iCloud.com and manually rip the jugular out of any cloud saved documents/photos/music/files that you have there. Except there appears to be one exception there - there's no Music option?

We have this new Nano ready to go and be used in the car, but there's no point while we have this shitstorm of iTunes confusion going on. I must have read and re-read warnings over a dozen times today that go along the lines of "this will completely remove the tunes from your device and iCloud" or "this is permanent and cannot be undone" - YES - just wipe the things clear!

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated. I really don't fancy going into the Trafford Centre anywhere near New Year's in order to sort out a trivial, stupid account issue!

Cheers,
D.

 

[mctw]

Unless I'm missing something, would it just be easiest to create a new iCloud account and start over?

 

[Darren S]

We did think about that - but surely it shouldn't come to that? Besides, Shelley has an outstanding credit on her account with iTunes vouchers and from what I can gather, it would take Apple themselves to transfer that balance onto another account.

The Apple Store suggested that we call the Apple Care line first. I guess what they say will dictate what we do next.

D.

 

[Rob]

I'd be willing to bet I could fix it in person, but without being able to play with it it's hard to figure it out.

Generally it's a trial and error process unfortunately.

 

[Tom]

You are over complicating this a touch.
I still don't get what you want to do?

The purchases section in the iTunes store will show you what is associated with that ID, even if you do a clean install these purchases will always show up in iTunes if you log in with that account. (although there is a setting in store preferences to turn that off called "show iTunes in the cloud purchases") You can manually change this association but why would you? its content you paid for?

 

[paddymph]

Could this be anything to do with that "transfer purchases" option you can tick?