The fundamental problem here is that libcrystalball doesn't exist yet: sometimes you want mute to mute the alarms (in concerts, though why would you need an ala

The fundamental problem here is that libcrystalball doesn't exist yet: sometimes you want mute to mute the alarms (in concerts, though why would you need an alarm there) and sometimes you need mute to not affect alarms (when getting up). As far as I can see, there's no way to reliably detect the situation at alarm time. Less and less as the time between setting mute and the alarm getting off increases. Warning the user when turning on mute doesn't help either because for one the mute switch on the iPhone can be operated blindly because the phone wibrates when you mute it, so usually you'd not look at the phone to mute it. And even if you did check its display and it did show that warning: the warning is totally useless for you most of the time (i.e before going to sleep), so that you will quickly be conditioned to ignore it - just like the security warnings in current OSes. Or you are like me and have your phone muted for the majority of the time. Showing me that warning two weeks before the concert wouldn't help at all. No. I believe that the current design which optimizes for the common case (not sleeping through the alarm) is fine. Just be mindful of this feature and check the alarms before the concert starts, or if you can at all afford it, just turn off the phone completely. The hurdle of turning it off is as big as the hurdle of remembering to correctly set a three-state mute feature, but the current two-state one with haptic feedback has the huge advantage of simplicity.