OK, but I'm originally from California and was there just a couple months ago. Same story at starbucks there: cameras on the ceiling, camera phones in tons of peoples' hands.
Sorry if you don't like it, but smartphones are everywhere now, and that's not gonna change. You might feel like sitting alone wearing a headset is somehow fundamentally different than sitting alone using a smartphone, but it really isn't. It is precisely the same in all respects that matter — you just aren't used to it yet.
However, we might be talking about a different kind of "coffee shop". I'm talking about corporate coffee shops like starbucks. They mainly offer industrial coffee and food, wifi, and a place to work, while you are in between things or in transit. I haven't been to Europe since before COVID ,but IIRC it was already pretty much the same there, too, even three years ago. I saw hundreds of people using iPhones, and pretty sure I didn't see anybody get asked to put it down.
Completely different. Your face and ears are covered, so the staff or anyone else can't interrupt your special virtual bubble. Not without tapping you on shoulder.
Perhaps you could place a doorbell on the table. When pressed it gives you a notification in your eye screens. You could rig up automated contextual replies "yes you can borrow the sugar". Saving you the bother of being human.
Sitting there with laptop or phone, you are not faceless like you are with VR headset.
Anybody could walk up and ask me a question, and I'd both see and hear them. In fact, that is one of the main points of today's announcement. The new "mixed reality" feature means exactly that.
(You could always hear people around you in VR (if you wished), but seeing your surroundings didn't work well at all, unless you used developer mode hacks, and even then the cameras were bad.)
With Meta's previous headset, I wouldn't contemplate using it in a starbucks.
Not because I prioritize people walking over and interrupting me, or them being able to see every inch of my face, but because I want to be able to see them.
Sitting in public without being able to hear and see what is going on around me does seem like a very weird thing to me. But that's not what's being talked about here.
Sorry if you don't like it, but smartphones are everywhere now, and that's not gonna change. You might feel like sitting alone wearing a headset is somehow fundamentally different than sitting alone using a smartphone, but it really isn't. It is precisely the same in all respects that matter — you just aren't used to it yet.
However, we might be talking about a different kind of "coffee shop". I'm talking about corporate coffee shops like starbucks. They mainly offer industrial coffee and food, wifi, and a place to work, while you are in between things or in transit. I haven't been to Europe since before COVID ,but IIRC it was already pretty much the same there, too, even three years ago. I saw hundreds of people using iPhones, and pretty sure I didn't see anybody get asked to put it down.