(The Apple support documents dealing with syncing to iPhones are circular they mention that it may be necessary to do an update but then link to other support documents, none of which are specific enough to address whether the iPhone should even be visible in iTunes as a device in macOS Catalina or earlier. What's more, in the past hour - prior to finding this discussion - I searched for more specifics about which versions of iTunes are compatible with which versions of iOS but came up empty handed.

I assumed, wrongly, that if Apple didn't want iTunes to work anymore they would have also cut off the Store, but that part still works - just not the ability to view my iPhone as a device in iTunes *even though* I selected 'Trust this device' when prompted by the new Phone.

(Having upgraded from a phone that was unable to update past iOS 15.x, I had no clue the new phone would break the sync feature. I have iTunes purchases going back over 20 years that I can't sync with my new iPhone in iTunes thanks to iOS 17.

ITunes 12.12.10 for ios instal