It's not typical usage, however.
Orientation lock is incredibly useful in two key areas for iPad: people lounging at home, and in business. I use the lock all the time in both settings -- especially when I'm using the iPad to demo and want to be able to pass it around the room.
Hiding the lock away in an area where many, many people will never find it and it's far slower to access is a hugely retrograde step, and the only thing in its defence is that it's consistent with the iPhone. Which is no defence at all: not only are the buttons different (vertical lock vs horizontal), the two devices are different, too.
I feel so strongly about this I'm staying on 3.2. I haven't felt the need to multitask on iPad yet -- I have an iPhone anyway :)
People use their iPhones to listen to things, but use iPads for the screen. On a device you listen to and that RINGS, making this a mute switch makes sense.
On a device you use for the screen, you're often twisting and turning views between portrait and landscape such as to suit each new web site you visit, so making this an orientation lock makes sense.
These devices are not the same, and the switch doesn't need to do the same thing.
It was a bad decision. People don't confuse their iPhone with their iPad. Both functions are accessible from the home home swipe screen; the hardware switches could have remained purposed to the device's most common uses.
An unrelated but interesting tip I stumbled on: on the lock screen, you can double click the home button to bring up the audio controls (without unlocking the device). Using those controls you can skip unlimited Pandora songs without getting the 'our license doesn't let you skip...' warning.
And the lock can be activated from the task tray, so it's still there.
I'm running pandora and I flipped the "mute" switch and it did nothing. I then switched to a video podcast and the same issue occurs, flipping the switch does NOT mute. The volume rocker worked normally... holding it down actually muted the device.
I've been aware of this change since beta, but what's the point? Especially if it doesn't function as expected. The iPad doesn't have a ringer or a vibrator (lol, for lack of a better word). I find this confusing! Which mute mutes‽
I preferred it as an orientation lock anyway... Maybe this should be configurable?
Compare to now, where you can unlock and relock the device while you roll, without looking at the screen.
Holy crap. Doesn't Apple drug-test their employees?
Decisions like this make me think they don't use their own products, which I know very well isn't true. Just plain weird.
Is this true of iOS 4.2 as well -- meaning, you can only lock the display in portrait mode with the double-click-wave-a-dead-cat-and-swipe-the-task-list maneuver? If so, I absolutely am not going to upgrade my iPad to 4.2.
The real frustration is that this would be a perfect place for a system preference: "Side switch: Orientation lock / Mute". But as usual, it's Steve's way or the highway.
Why would they support locking both modes on the iPad, and not on the iPhone? It's not that I don't believe you, but I'm still reluctant to install 4.2 on my iPad until I understand what Apple actually did here.
It is that you don't believe me, otherwise you would ... believe me; that's OK though I grok "trust, but verify" so I quickly made a demo video:
That really is a strange inconsistency, though. I guess it's tied to the functionality that allows the home screen to reorient itself on the iPad but not on the phone.