Traveling with Apple Vision Pro

I take out my earbuds even saying Hi to the bus driver I can't imagine talking to a flight attendant while wearing a VR device. It seems very uninterested in the person you are talking to.

Could be just me but I think a lot of older generations share this experience. It is not hard to take out your earbuds or take off your VR device to show you are paying attention to the person you are talking to.

There's a huge shift in this field at the moment. I personally find it disrespectful to talk to people while wearing headphones/earbuds and I'd still consider myself young but a lot of younger people, especially u25 seem to find this completely normal.

I'm not sure I like this development. Ignoring the "disrespectful" part, it has become accepted to toy with your phone while listening to someone and let's be honest, we all know you're not REALLY listening or engaging with the conversation.

I personally also take them out. But don’t see it as rude or disrespectful if others don’t.

Especially with AirPods gaining hearing aid functionality, it shouldn’t be a sign of lack of focus.

As an aside, I personally able to concentrate _more_ in certain scenarios when I am fiddling or have background noise playing. It quiets the part of my brain that otherwise gets distracted. I use that method for video conferences to increase the amount I am focused on the speaker and content.

I think your perception of what is being played inside the earbuds may be why you're confused about this. Around here it's extremely common for people to keep their earbuds in for short conversations, but everyone will pause and activate surrounding sounds while they talk. There are obviously assholes who don't, but in general it's completely normal to assume someone wearing earbuds is listening to you.

Contradictory to your experience with it being young people who wouldn't listen to you it tends to be the 45ish business man who continues to talk on their phone in my experience.

What about earbuds aiding in hearing? Lots of scenarios where earbuds can help with hearing and not impede it. I use AirPod Pros on flights for cancelling out the loud background noise of the plane but it makes talking to others much easier.

It doesn't give any social cues on how you are using it. That is, people cannot tell whether you are using earbuds to block outside sound or to enhance outside sound. Therefore it doesn't work, until social norms change.

I remember the real hearing aids of yesteryear. They look sufficiently different from earbuds that they are always acceptable.

> in general it's completely normal to assume someone wearing earbuds is listening to you

Just because you emphatically state that something is normal, that does not make it normal

It actually is a real pain to put the headset on and off frequently. Much, much more so than earbuds. It's a major UX issue.

I don't even really see people take off headphones in this scenario, just uncovering an ear. It would be fairly hilarious to see someone lift up one side of an AR headset to make (singular) eye contact, tho.

I think it's a little disingenuous for you to take what I said out of the context I said it in, but you're right as far as it's in my anecdotal experience. Which is why I said "around here", but I guess I could've made it even clearer.

>Could be just me but I think a lot of older generations share this experience.

I am only 32 and wouldn't consider myself old.

I used to get very uncomfortable, maybe even angry, when people at the cashier in the supermarket just did not get off their headphones and just leave a simple hello to the person at the counter. Nowadays I am just mildly irritated sometimes, but I still think it's stupid. Especially if the cashier is a really nice and polite person. Leaving on your headphones and not saying a word, sometimes not even giving them a look, feels like a f- you in their face. Just be nice to other people and it even works if you are a very socially awkward person like me. The world can be nice and even give you a smile every once in a while.

This obviously got worse since corona. Germany used to be a cash-heavy country, but now since "everyone" is just paying by card, they just pull it out, wave around with it to signal that they want to pay with it, so that they don't even have to say one single word. So weird.

These days there's open earbuds that look a lot like hearing aids

Yes, I found it funny that the interaction the reviewer did participate it (asking for tea) was okay to conduct while still strapped into the AVP Face Jail, but:

> One caveat is that, out of respect, if the conversation is more than the “what would you like? Tea please” deal, I do remove the headset to make direct eye contact with them. I feel that it would be sort of odd to have a full-on conversation with someone if they’re wearing a headset (like bro, just take it off and let’s talk like humans).

So there's an implied metric of "meaningful interaction" where, below a certain threshold, it's okay to treat the other person as an NPC?

Perhaps I'm being an uncharitable curmudgeon here, but I even take my earbuds out when I'm asking for tea on a flight.

It's a hassle for you to take it off and disconcerting for the other person if you don't. If the interaction is quick, doing nothing could be overall optimal.