iPhone/iTunes play count & location updating

Here's the scenario:

• My phone holds my music list, and is synchronized with my home computer
• My work computer also runs iTunes, and I plug my phone in there to play music by first having told it not to sync automatically, then selecting the device in the left pane and clicking on a song or podcast

Previously (say, iOS 5 and the appropriate iTunes version) I would do this daily, and when I got home to sync my phone any fully played podcasts would be marked as played at home, play counts of songs would be updated, and half-played podcasts would have their "play head" position synced to wherever I left off. I could then pick up where I left off on my home computer if I wanted to. On the work computer, when I'd click 'eject' on my device in iTunes I would see a brief "Syncing iPhone..." window pop up and that would update the play counts and position of anything that I'd updated while connected. If I didn't eject, then that data would sometimes be lost, which is understandable (and I would always make a point to eject so I wouldn't lose my position).

Now (iOS 6, iTunes 10.7 (21)) when I get home all that information is lost and whatever the play count or status was on my home computer is written back to the phone. I also note that if I start playing a podcast via my work computer over USB, and then open the video app on the phone (or the Music app if it's an audio-only podcast), it does not know where I left off previously and starts from the beginning or my home computer's "play head" position.

Any ideas? I've restored the phone not that long ago, but starting from new isn't something I'd like to do because of the time involved in reconfiguring everything. My current "solution" is to only start a podcast at work if I know I can finish it so I don't have to write down where I left off :>

Set the iPhone to Manually manage music, Does the trick for me.