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Nope. Everybody is missing here that the mute switch has a dual purpose as an indicator when the iPad is not in use. This means that if you're at a meeting, you can just glance down at the iPad and tell if it will make noise. There is nothing essential about orientation that warrants its being indicated externally when iPad's not in use.

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Be serious. The amount of people that use the iPad in meetings in negligible compared to the amount that use it laying in their bed every evening, where the orientation switch was very useful.

How do you know? Business and education are a couple of the biggest markets for this product, so I'm sure there are lots of folks who will be using these in meetings, class, and in the library. I've been using this OS for over a month and I can tell you that you get accustomed to it quickly, and the mute switch will come in handy.

And the lock can be activated from the task tray, so it's still there.

Just to be clear the orientation lock is still there. It's now a software toggle instead of a physical switch.

I can see a case for using it as the mute switch. I can't see a case for changing the behavior and not providing any way at all to get the old behavior back.

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