The current crappiness of AR reminds me of the early days of MP3 players. Only a few geeks had them, and it took forever to load an album over the printer port if it didn't crash half way. Then 5 years later, everyone had an iPod.
I was in highschool when MP3 players were a thing, just before and slightly after the iPod. Everyone had one.
I wasn't in a particularly affluent or tech-savvy area. It was cheap to buy and just required you to know how to move files from one drive to the other in a computer - which was a skill that was very common and was actually taught at schools in my area.
What specifically looks similar to you? Consider there are many things which at some point only a few geeks had and which 5 (or 50) years later still only a few geeks had.
When Apple announced ARKit, this culturally geeky (not a tech) coworker of mine scoffed, saying Nintendo had something like that for the DS ages ago. That's exactly how geeks responded to the iPod with the infamous CmdrTaco post ("Lame") as a prime example.
But this is my point. Geeky people have a strong opinion about how much this or that implementation sucks or doesn't suck. No one has a strong opinion about VR platforms, or quantum computing, or drones, or any other next big thing, so that makes AR look like it has half a chance to me.
The thing is I didn't have to go into an AR community online to find opinions. Some guy at my work who isn't even a tech was giving me unsolicited snarky AR opinions.
