gdgt

Google search and searching gdgt points me to programs like Phone Disk or iExplorer. I imagine that with iTunes 9 and iOS 4, such programs worked reasonably well.

However, it appears that some change in iTunes 10 broke this and the app makers haven't caught up:

From the Macroplant FAQ (www.macroplant.com­/faq.php­?program­=Phone­+Disk­+%28P...):

What is Phone Disk saying that I've exceeded the number of app directories?
We're not entirely sure why this problem exists, but there's not much we can do to resolve it at this time. Our software relies on the interface setup by iTunes, and this bug exists in iTunes as well.

The best solution to this issue for the time being is to simply stick within or two apps for the duration of each run of Phone Disk. Then, if you need to change to a different app directory, just reopen the program.

And just to clarify: we're only talking about switching between the root app folders. This bug does not affect switching between subdirectories and files within an app or the Media directory.

So, any other suggestions?

I'm not about to change hardware or platform at this point in time (the free cash is tied up in other things). Would prefer not to jailbreak (tried it before on my iPhone 3G, it was handy at the time but from iOS 4 on I haven't needed jailbreak functionality).