Apple Thoughts: Orientation Switch on iPad Will Soon Be a Mute Button

"When iOS 4.2 gets rolled out to iPad users sometime in the coming weeks, the button on the side that, until now, has prevented the screen from swapping between portrait and landscape will become a mute switch, just like it is on the iPhone. However, since this is clearly a software-managed control rather than being hard-wired, some users were hoping that this might be configurable somewhere in the settings."

I like the orientation switch so this is not good news for me. Apple won't even make it configurable apparently, which is par for the course with Apple when it comes to modifications of hardware controls. What are your thoughts, good or bad?