Speaking at an event held at Oxford University Wednesday, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook threw cold water on the future of virtual reality. At almost the same time halfway across the world, Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was extolling the virtues of VR now and into the future.

When asked a question from a student about how people would take to virtual reality, Cook responded that the future is not VR but AR, or augmented reality. “I’m incredibly excited by AR because I can see uses for it everywhere,” said Cook, in education, in sports and for the general consumer. “I can see it in every business that I know anything about,” he said.

“I also like the fact that it doesn’t isolate,” said Cook. Perhaps in response to a slew of articles and research lately about addictive technologies such as social media and VR, Cook added, “I don’t like our products being used a lot. I like our products amplifying thoughts and I think AR can help amplify the human connection. I’ve never been a fan of VR like that because I think it does the opposite.”

Most of all, he told some of England’s future leaders of technology, “there are clearly some cool niche things for VR but it’s not profound in my view. AR is profound.”

Apple’s ARKit is a step in that direction, a useful bit of technology that allows you to put virtual items in a real environment — more than mere cartoonish creatures appearing on sidewalks, but things such as virtual furniture in a real house. It’s this kind of practical use that has led Cook to announce that with AR he doesn’t believe that “anything will be untouched.”

Speaking at Facebook’s Oculus 4 event in San Francisco, however, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg offered a polar opposite view of VR, even if he gave a nod to AR as well. “Virtual reality is about imagining the world as it could be,” he said. “Opening up more of those experiences to all of us is not isolating, it’s freeing.”

Zuckerberg then gave the example of an 80-year-old woman in the U.K. who bought the Oculus Rift to explore new worlds, and another person who used VR to help stimulate neural pathways to begin restoring use of paralyzed legs.

Zuckerberg added that Facebook was more committed than ever to virtual reality and aims to get a billion people strapped to a headset sometime in the unspecified future. “The road ahead will not always be easy,” said Zuckerberg, but added, “VR will change the way we see the world and it will make our lives better.”

It’s anyone’s guess if these skippers of two of the largest tech companies in the world were espousing a sincere philosophy or merely getting behind their respective product strategies, but both seemed sincere in their stated beliefs. Even less certain, however, is who’s right.

Image: Álvaro Tajada Portalo and thierry ehrmann via Flickr