Fixing iPhone sync oddities
So I’ve been fighting with my iPhone for months. Ever since the 2.0 update, I have been dealing with lots of annoying issues trying to get the sync to work properly. The most notable were my phantom calendars. iTunes couldn’t see any of my iCal calendars, but it *did* see about 20 calendars that hadn’t existed in a month. This made my calendar altogether worthless on the iPhone. Add to this the 20-minute backup/sync operations, and I was getting properly fed up.
I tried a number of times to restore my iPhone from backup, but those problems just came back with the restore. And Apple has been thoroughly useless with this issue. So after a bit of digging, I found a solution. My calendars now work, my backup/sync takes about 30 seconds, and everything is great. Note that I have no idea what the possible ramifications of this operation are, but It Worked For Me ™. These directions are assuming you’re on OSX. I’m sure that it’s similar on Windows, but I don’t know where the appropriate folders are stored.
If you have TimeMachine set up, I’d strongly suggest doing a backup before you start. If you don’t have TimeMachine, get an external drive, set up TimeMachine, do a backup, and then start. 
- Do a “Restore” in iTunes to wipe out your iPhone. After the wipe is done *do not* restore a backup just yet.
- Shut down iTunes.
- Open Finder, go to your home folder, then Library -> Application Support -> SyncServices.
- Delete (or move) the Local folder.
- Start iTunes, and restore your iPhone from the most recent backup.
One the restore is complete you should have all of your contacts, etc back. In my case, I was doing this to fix the calendars, so I had to go back to the Info tab and tell it to sync my calendars again.
After you do the initial sync to copy all of your music back (which can take a really long time), every subsequent sync should be about 30 seconds or less. At least they are for me. YMMV.
