When you get a new iPad or iPad 2, you will sometimes find yourself with the inability to play music or sounds. When you take your device right out of the box, there are volume up and down buttons and a little switch. By default this switch locks the orientation of your device into portrait or landscape mode. This is handy if you frequently shuffle the position while you are using the device and are tired of it automatically shifting. The big problem people experience once you run some updates is that all sounds have been muted and you can’t get anything to play properly. This is due to the Apple 4.2 update that changed the way that button worked by default. Now, instead of locking your orientation, it is the mute button (making it very redundant being right by the volume buttons). Rest assured there is an easy solution for this problem and it now allows you to configure the button to two different options.
We reported initially when this problem surfaced and had a great workaround that addressed and fixed this problem. Due to some new updates, this old method is not very relevant anymore, so you will want to use the new one. What you want to do now is access Settings and then General. There is an option midway down that says “Lock Rotation.” There are two options here “Lock Rotation” and “Mute,” these are the two new options to allow you to fix the sound problem.
This is a rather simple fix once you realize what you actually need to do, which is why we tend to get a wide number of emails from our users asking about this problem. Hopefully, this tutorial will put this problem to bed and you will now have a fully functional iPad.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
