TBH I am a bit disappointed, I was holding out hope that maybe Apple could finally be the one to crack this.
But at the same time I am kinda glad not to see another half baked AR come out, especially from someone like Apple (or Google) that has a big enough name that many will know about it.
Unfortunately, yes this seems to be the state of matters currently regardless of cash invested, similar to ie fully automated driving.
And since Apple is very consistent to wall-gardening everything it can, its usefulness would be limited hard to Apple-only ecosystem as much as possible, which means basically useless expensive product for most of humanity (sorry for this jab but it reflects how Apple does its business, monetarily successful or not)
But at the same time I am kinda glad not to see another half baked AR come out, especially from someone like Apple (or Google) that has a big enough name that many will know about it.