Extremely slow sync from iTunes to iPhone 5

It's taking HOURS (>10 hours so far) to sync my new iPhone 5 to iTunes 10.7.  The process is stalled at "Step 5 of 5 Waiting for items to copy".  I am manually managing content on the phone, and I had a small fraction of my total iTunes content on my iPhone 4 that was deactivated yesterday when my new iPhone 5 became active.  I've tried a restore on the new iPhone 5, shutdown/restart of the computer (new Mac Mini running 10.8.2), hard reset of the iPhone 5, ejecting and reconnecting the iPhone 5.  I'm using the same AppleID as before.
I've got many greyed-out songs on my iPhone 5.  It appears that all the songs that were on my iPhone 4 have been or are in the process of being moved to my iPhone 5.  The greyed out songs have the double-arrow circular icon next to them on the left side, but the icon isn't moving. 
The topline message at Step 5 of 5 has changed - now it reads "Syncing Genius Data to Bob's iPhone".  So smething seems to be happening and the process isn't stalled, but it's taking way too long!
I called Apple Support, and they blame iTunes and had me contact them.  I'm not very satisfied with this, as it doesn't really explain the very long time the sync has taken. 
Ideas on how to fix this and keep it from happening again would be appreciated.  Is this a one-time thing or will I be faced with this every time I connect to iTunes?

I had a very similar problem when syncing my iPhone 5 with iTunes 10.7.
Here's what I did to fix it after spending a whole afternoon reading what others have done:
- Perform a soft reset on your iPhone by holding down the home key and the power off button until your phone restarts
- Turn off Airport wifi on your Mac
- Restart your Mac
- Turn Airport wifi back on
Now, try to sync your iPhone.  iTunes should immediately see your iPhone and sync very quickly.
It works for me.  Just don't ask me why or how it works.
Good luck!

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