At most parties I’ve been to in the last several years, the music source was one or more iPods. For this reason, a Party Mode would be of some use. Locking your iPod while it is being used for playback prevents other people from playing DJ, which might make sense if you’ve carefully constructed a playlist, but if you are open to letting others choose music from your library there should be a middle ground.
- iPod Settings: Party Mode off
- Party Mode Settings: off
- Party Mode Settings: on
- Wi-Fi toggle for battery conservation.
- Though not depicted, Brightness controls might also make sense.
- There is a good argument for allowing action-specific sound toggling. My thinking is that for the time the iPod is in Party Mode, it’s just a music player. You don’t want spam landing in your inbox to interrupt a jam.
- Enable a Passcode if you want to retain iron-fisted control.
- Restrictions would allow you to hide any individual app other than Music and Settings. For example, you might want to block those with personal information such as Contacts and Mail while the iPod is sitting unattended.
In my experience, iPhones users don’t offer up their devices for party music, which is understandable given that you might need your phone to take calls from guests, etc. Were a Party Mode offered on the iPhone, options to silence the ringer and send calls directly to voicemail would be useful.