Smart Playlists Created on MacBook Air Don't Match When Synchronized with iPhone

I have created a smart playlist on my laptop to display songs I have rated with more than three stars, limited to the 25 tracks sorted by least recently played.

For over a year now, the songs in this playlist on my laptop never match the songs in this playlist on my iPhone. About 60% of the tracks are the same, but regardless of how many times I delete, uninstall, refresh, or synchronize, I can never get the two playlists to contain the exact same tracks. There also does not ever seem to be any rhyme or reason to the tracks which decide to appear on my iPhone versus which ones appear in my laptop's version of the playlist. It's infuriating.

I've been using Apple Music / iTunes since it was originally released in 2001 and have a very carefully curated library of 15,000+ tracks in my library, all converted to mp3 and meticulously organized, tagged, etc. I am a technology professional with 35+ years experience developing software applications (including iOS apps) so it's not like I don't know how to use computers.

That I cannot reliably synchronize my music between my MacBook Air and my iPhone is incredibly annoying.

* I do not subscribe to the Apple Music service.

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MacBook Air

15-inch, M3, 2024

Sonoma 14.7.2

Music v. 1.4.6.32

iPhone 15 Pro

iOS 18.3.2