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The mute button silences alerts (new mail, push notifications, etc.). Individual apps can specify whether their audio output should be effected by the mute button.
 
It's such a pointless "feature" - They should have left it as the orientation lock. There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to assign the function we want for it, or change it back to the orientation lock.
 
It's such a pointless "feature" - They should have left it as the orientation lock. There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to assign the function we want for it, or change it back to the orientation lock.

No! It will do what Steve wants it to do, not what you want it to do.:)

Seriously though they should provide an option so you can select the function you want the button to do, however you will just have to learn to live with it. Generally Apple does not backtrack on decisions. The last big backtrack they made was with the iPod Shuffle, but I don't see them changing their mind on this one.
 
The mute switch let's you mute game noises for example, so you can listen to your own music while playing a game.

It works the same across all iOS devices now.

I think it was a mistake for Apple to change it from Mute to Rotation Lock in the first place. It would have been less confusing if they had just left it as Mute.
 
I was actually hoping for a mute, as in no sound. Can't beliece it is just for a limited number of applications.
 
I was actually hoping for a mute, as in no sound. Can't beliece it is just for a limited number of applications.
Why would you think that? You have an iPhone. You know how it works. It's now consistent across all iDevices and that's what Apple was going for. Why it was a rotation lock in the first place is beyond me.
 
It's now consistent across all iDevices.

Not exactly. iPod touch doesn't have a "mute" switch. OS system sounds like mail alerts, calendar alerts and keyboard clicks can be turned on and off from settings.app, but I'm not sure there's a way to mute push notification alerts or game sounds on the touch.
 
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