#muteswitch

So if you've been living under a rock, an iPhone alarm went off during a performance at the New York Philharmonic, and the conductor went as far as to stop the show and berate the guy.

Gruber notes that he thinks this is an edge case that can't be easily addressed. I'd argue otherwise. The concept of a Sound Profile is non-existent on the iPhone, and with good reason since it can get excessive (most feature phones and all Blackberries ship with several), but it shouldn't be.

I should be able to define a quiet profile, a loud profile, a vibrate-only profile, and hopefully an outright off profile as well as a bedside profile, or i should be able to stick with the default 2 (Noise, Vibrate). Profiles should control ALL sound output from the phone that is considered an Alert. Music, game sound, etc., would all be classified separately, but alarms, calendar and task list reminders, message/call alerts, and third party notifications would all fall under the concept of the profile.

Yes, this is like the system RIM has on the Blackberry.

Yes, they had a shitty UI on it that made it slightly painful to set up.

Yes, I understand it would add a layer of complexity to the average user.

No, I don't give a damn.

Being able to only switch between a vibrate profile and a "make noise" profile is one of the lamest fucking features about my iPhone, and I've ranted about it before, to anybody who will listen. Would a more flexible system have saved the poor chump at the Philharmonic? Reportedly he only had received the phone earlier in the day/week and wasn't fully versed in its functions yet, so probably not. Does it have the potential to allow me to receive a critical phone call in the middle of the night? Yes. Right now, if I forget the mute switch before I go to bed, the phone could vibrate for hours and I wouldn't hear it. Whereas my Bold's Nightstand mode let me block out the pings of Emails (except critical ones), quiet the sounds of text messages, and blare the sound of a phone call.