Maps now align properly, but are now completely useless if you just want a map to carry around with you, centered on your home base. People who aren't ready to make a map wall will find maps to be of no use at all anymore; If people want to make a map wall they can use the console to line up their coordinates, the rest of us shouldn't lose the functionality that these items once had.
= This DOES NOT WORK as intended, Mojang!!!
Confirmed for 14w32d. Upside down stars are particularly problematic, as they've made chests placed behind them inaccessible.
I came to the conclusion that the droppers were bugged after all. Running the redstone along the other side of the bottom seems to make the signal climb all the way to the top, but I can't explain why. The world this is in is HUGE and I wouldn't want to upload it here, but it's a very standard-design dropper tower that I use regularly in other places in the world (as well as in the room itself, as part of an automated storage system).
TLDR; It's no longer preventing my machines from working but it is an inexplicable and inconvenient bug.