iTunes + Podcasts alternative

[koffiejunkie]

Once upon a time, there was iTunes on the Mac, and Music app on the iPhone. You could make playlists with podcasts in them, and sync that to your phone. Perfect for the collection of 3-minute news podcasts I listen to on my morning commute. Your subscription information was synced too, so when travelling, you could download new episodes directly on the phone. When you've finished listening to an episode, you could delete it right off the phone, and it wouldn't again. Life was good.

But something changed, and Apple seems intent on completely ruining my podcast experience. Since introducing the the Podcast app, things have only gotten worse:

• Playlists of podcasts no longer sync to the iPhone.
• While playing podcasts in iTunes, they now auto-advance when the podcast is finished. This cannot be disabled.
• They auto-advance backwards. That's right: from the newest to the oldest. Why, Apple? Whyyyyy? This can not be disabled either. You can only change the sort order, so your podcasts are sorted the opposite way of every other OS X app (i.e. Mail.app - newest mail is at the top).
• The player app is slow. When opening the app after syncing with iTunes, it often takes minutes before new episodes show up.
• After finishing one episode, it is shown with the "partially played" icon, rather than the "played one"
• Old episode placeholders (i.e. the audio file isn't there, just the metadata) appear seemingly at random.

There's more, but you get the picture.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a pair of apps (OS X and iPhone) that isn't as brain damaged, and that allows sycning the phone?

Just to be clear: I'm not looking for stand-alone apps on either platform. I'm looking for something that integrates the two.

Thanks