★ On the Behavior of the iPhone Mute Switch:
Daniel J. Wakin, reporting for the NYT:
The unmistakably jarring sound of an iPhone marimba ring
interrupted the soft and spiritual final measures of Mahler’s
Symphony No. 9 at the New York Philharmonic on Tuesday night. The
conductor, Alan Gilbert, did something almost unheard-of in a
concert hall: He stopped the performance. But the ringing kept on
going, prompting increasingly angry shouts in the audience
directed at the malefactor.[Snippage -Ed]
I think the current behavior of the iPhone mute switch is correct. You can’t design around every single edge case, and a new iPhone user who makes the reasonable but mistaken assumption that the mute switch silences everything, with an alarm set that he wasn’t aware of, and who is sitting in the front row of the New York Philharmonic when the accidental alarm goes off, is a pretty good example of an edge case.
Whereas if the mute switch silenced everything, there’d be thousands of people oversleeping every single day because they went to bed the night before unaware that the phone was still in silent mode.
[Part of the problem here was that the marimba sound was apparently the culprit which would cause a lot of performers and conductors to pull up short. But also, while I agree that the phone does the right thing (tricky though that is) it makes me wonder how many people know that the alarms are not silenced when you mute the phone? I’d bet a lot.
If this is not possible, you’ll want to set the ringer to mute, set the system audio to zero, launch Siri and lower the volume to zero, disable all alarms, and review the Settings > Notifications items in the Notification Center to switch off audio. There’s probably some items Auntie is missing here, but she trusts her nieces and nephews will refine this list in the comments.
[snippage -Ed.]
For those rare occasions where you really need to bypass these design choices, powering the iPhone down will keep it from embarrassing faux pas.
A suggestion I can get behind.]
Source: Daring Fireball
turnings :: daniel berlinger 