Apple has now joined Facebook, Google, and others in releasing Augmented Reality, or AR, platforms as commercial products. It's common, these days, to hear people say AR is more interesting than VR, but it's not consistently clear why or how. I'm in this camp because the possibilities of augmenting the real world are far more interesting and life-changing than creating increasingly more insular and fantastically realistic virtual worlds. What the above companies keep showing, AR through camera-and-screens setups, is a far cry from what we should expect of AR. If you spend time reading about AR or VR, you'll likely hear the phrase "Mixed Reality." It comes from Milgram and Kishino's 1994 continuum plotting the major intervals between totally unmediated reality and complete virtualized reality. Virtuality, for reference, is the ability of a computer to make the real world behave according to the computer's rules (according to Murray Turoff's 1997 definition for the ACM)
Milgram and Kishino's (1994) Mixed Reality spectrum, adapted by Schmalstieg & Hollerer (2016)
The two main points of interest between the extremes, Augmented Reality and Augmented Virtuality, are the 'mixed' points wherein virtuality is a minority or majority of the heterogeneous experience. Reality and Virtual Reality are both totally immersive if they truly are complete, but barring theories wherein we already exist in total virtuality, commercial VR isn't totally immersive because you can take the helmet off whenever you want, and that's for the best. Commercial VR probably exists between Augmented Virtuality and Virtual Reality proper on this continuum. Augmented Reality and Augmented Virtuality are where the user feels the conscious mixing of Reality and Virtuality. AV is where virtual elements are primary drivers of the experience--big graphics, or overlays that really just locate a virtual experience outside an immersive environment somehow--think of Pokémon GO. In AR on the other hand, true AR, reality drives the experience. AR connects information to the real world through automatic integration: the virtual elements shouldn't alter perception of reality but enhance it. Using virtual elements to change the way you perceive things, to put virtual overlays on Reality to change it instead of better seeing it for what it is, is not Augmented Reality proper, it's more like Augmented Virtuality.
This is where the battle for the soul of AR will be, if we pay attention to it. It's easy to see how Google Glass-style ads, information feeds, and 'identity ratings' can be argued to be 'augmenting' reality by populating it with data, but Virtuality has a lot of influence in those use-cases. True Augmented Reality is more passive and less flashy: distributing information connected to what's going on locally, not aggregating broad data and shoehorning it into your line of sight constantly. Augmented Reality, in fact, doesn't have to rely on visuals for the primary feedback, unlike the products we're seeing today.
Of course, we're not there yet. Mostly what Facebook and Apple have introduced are platforms that use the camera to get a live feed of 'reality' and add something too it. In this case, the focus is still on the virtual 'thing' being added, and what's really there is an afterthought to what's visible on the screen--a virtualized environment for displaying information.
Facebook AR pitch images to developers
More Facebook AR PR
This strategy makes sense for Facebook because it fits their business model of collecting information and using it to keep users inside their platform. AR like this keeps its users inside the virtual world of Facebook. True Augmented Reality is an ideal UI for ubiquitous computing (UbiComp), wherein data or computing is ubiquitously available, but you're not constantly bombarded with it (Ambient Computing is starting gain traction along these lines, too, but it's not the same thing necessarily). AR UbiComp is something you can call upon or experience through doing something in the environment--like climbing a tree, taking a walk, or playing with your dog--but UbiComp doesn't direct the experience or structure it for you, unlike Virtuality.
Apple is in a better position to make UbiComp AR a reality through its devices like AirPods and the Apple Watch that add to your life by fading away into it, but even those are narrow products and come with steep price tags. Amazon's Echo would be a good example of UbiComp if it's main purpose wasn't to be a cash register in your living room and help Amazon overcome WalMart.
In truth, UbiComp-style AR is hard to conceive outside current consumer-model economics where a product rarely exists if it doesn't enable selling something else or make a huge profit on its own. It's also hard to get products off the ground if they don't enable the producer to collect data in exchange. UbiComp AR is more like computing-as-utility, and that's a fever dream in our modern era. Still, it's no reason to be satisfied with current offerings. We can all demand more of Augmented Reality. It's capable of much more.
References for AR, VR, Mixed Reality, and UbiComp in this article primarily come from Schmalstieg & Hollerer (2016) Augmented Reality: Principles and Practice, Jerald (2015) The VR Book: Human-Centered Design for Virtual Reality