Kiss the home button good bye!!!
I guarantee this is the first step in Steve making the home button disappear.
Yes, I also thought of "Honeycomb" BUT, Apple actually has done this already in the new iPod nano with a long press. Does that make you feel better now lol? Also, "Honeycomb" adds a second bar at the bottom of the screen for the "home", "back" and "multi-tasking" commands which takes up screen real estate. I think multi-touch gestures are a much more elegant solution!
P.S. Matias Duarte designed WebOS which is very nice next to iOS and has the best multi-tasking UI implementation, and is now at Google heading up the new "Honeycomb" UI. I may not like Android or Google, but he is a pretty good designer and has some good ideas. I think it makes sense to make tablets orientation agnostic, especially when it is so nicely and easily done with multi-touch gestures like these!
Now I'm not sure about the volume, mute, sleep/wake buttons.