I am having a ridiculous experience with iTunes. A couple of days ago I plugged my iPhone into the iMac, iTunes opened up and gave me the following message: iTunes could not connect to this iPhone. This device is no longer connected. I tried changing cables, changing ports, resetting the iPhone, restarting iTunes, rebooting the computer and changing to a new test user. iTunes did not recognize the iPhone or any other iOS device. iPhoto recognized the devices, but no joy in iTunes. The iPhone was recognized by iTunes on my wife's iMac.
So I called Apple Care. Turns out this is a common problem in iTunes for Windows but this problem on a Mac was a first for the Level 2 Tech to whom I eventually got transferred. iTunes is no finger a standalone app in OS X. It is now built into the operating system, which means when it gets corrupted, your only option is reinstall the OS clean. You can't install from a backup because it might reinstall the corrupt iTunes.
I moved WeatherCat to my wife's iMac using the excellent guide in the Wiki, wiped my partition and installed Yosemite fresh. Now I get to see how many days it takes me to reinstall my software and move my data back onto the computer.
Since iTunes has become Apple's all-in-one solution for integrating all of your music, movies, photos, podcasts and books, and each release gets bigger and more bloated, it's bound to blow up every once in a while. When it does, it ain't pretty.
Moral of the story: It's just a computer and there are more important things in life. Count your blessings and watch the weather.