There were some changes to the autocrafting table, yes. I forget all the details, but among other things, crafting is no longer instant. You can see this by putting multiples of the resources for the recipe into the crafting grid. As soon as there is more than one of everything (it will never consume the last of any item), the progress bar will start filling. It takes about 4 seconds or so per crafting, if memory serves.
The table also autobalances resources now. For example, if you have the recipe for a furnace laid out, and then drop a full stack of cobblestone on one of the eight positions, it will spread itself across all of them until there's 8-9 in every spot. This makes it extremely easy to just pipe resources into the table, because it takes care of making proper use of them. Perhaps the auto-pulling from chests was removed for this reason? I don't remember exactly, but give the pumping items in a try.