Bugs & Fixes: IPhone Connect Errors, Audiobook Crashes

A pair of iPhone problems grabbed my attention this week. Let's jump right in.

Error 0xE8000035 prevents iPhone connecting to iTunes

Most of the time, syncing an iPhone proceeds as smoothly as silk. You connect the iPhone to your Mac in iTunes and hit the Sync button. A minute or so later, you're done.

Unfortunately, this process may occasionally get derailed at the very first step. That is, the iPhone fails to even show up in iTunes Devices list. While there are several variations of this symptom, I want to focus on just one: When you get an error message stating that "iTunes could not connect to iPhone...because an unknown error occurred. (0xE8000035)."

As an aside, you would think that Apple, of all companies, would have more user-friendly error messages than ones that identify a problem simply by a cryptic number. Apparently not.

Regardless, the most likely fix is a simple one. If you connected your iPhone to a USB hub, a keyboard, a monitor or any other USB peripheral: unplug it. Instead, plug it directly into one of the USB ports on your Mac. That should do it.

If that fails, there are several other potential fixes, such as the ones outlined in this Apple article. As a last resort, you'll need to restore your iPhone.

Audiobooks crash?

A new Apple article reveals that the iPod app on an iPhone (and the Music app on an iPod touch) may crash when attempting to play an audiobook if you have synced 20 or more audiobooks to your mobile device.

One work-around is obvious: sync less than 20 books. Another solution is to create a playlist for all your audiobooks in iTunes and sync this playlist to your iPhone or iPod touch, rather than use iTunes' built-in Audiobooks playlist. Expect Apple to eradicate this bug in a future update.