After repeatedly hitting my head against the brickwall that is iTunes 11.4 (11.4.0.18 to be specific in my case) and iOS 8 (8.0.2), I am beginning to form an overall picture of the nature (but not the cause) of this increasingly frustrating problem.
Essentially, whenever there is any difference between the apps in your iTunes and your devices (iPhone, iPad, etc), whether it be in the form of you updating the apps in your iTunes but not your devices and vice versa, or in the form of you deleting, adding, or re-arranging the apps in your devices, the syncing process between iTunes and your devices will hang will it gets to the stage of syncing the apps. You may see this problem manifested in the inability to update the apps in your devices, which you had already updated in iTunes, or the system trying but failing to re-install apps that you have deleted on your devices, which the syncing process should have reflected in your iTunes if it did not hang.
In one of my earlier posts on this subject, I thought that a workaround for this problem would be to update your apps on your devices first, and then independently on your iTunes, before connecting them and syncing. However, this patch only worked if you did not add, deleted, or re-arranged any apps on your devices, and after you have done so, independent updates are not sufficient to prevent the syncing process from hanging.
Now, I have stumbled upon a more effective workaround, but there's a catch. I found that if you deleted all your apps (including the underlying files) in your iTunes, the syncing process works. Moreover, deleting the apps on my iTunes did not affect the apps already present on my devices. However, the price you pay in taking this workaround is that you have to manually manage your apps on each device. Also, if and when Apple manages to solve this problem, you will have to undergo the tedious task of rebuilding your app library on iTunes, so that you can once again sync apps between your iTunes and all devices. As I need my music, videos, and books synced, this is a price I am willing to pay.
On top of this app syncing problem, Apple has failed to address the problem over loss of control over the "Other" storage component, and even though it pains me, I am now looking into whether there is a better eco-system than iTunes and iCloud, especially one which I have more control over storage and syncing processes.