Some percentage of this has to be people simply not agreeing on the way to describe what they are experiencing even if they are experiencing the same thing.
The article makes clear there are significant differences in how multiple areas of the brain are activated in people at different ends of the "has aphantasia"/"doesn't have aphantasia" spectrum.
I believe that there is something past just a disagreement on definitions.
What "glory" do you speak of? For me, the apple is more of an idea and I can VERY faintly "see" fuzzy attributes about its geometry. And there is no color.
But I have a variable audio and proprioceptive imagination that is something in between, like many people have described above for visuals. Not like a hallucination or waking dream with perceptions equivalent to real senses, but with way more qualia than just an abstract idea. A distinct category of simulation that lies somewhere in between.
So, I can believe that others have things more like this, but visually. And I have observed mentally ill people with full on hallucinations and delusions, and can also believe that there are other stages along this spectrum, more vivid but still distinguishing self-generated from sensory-generated perceptions.
For imagery, I have the most tenuous topological or spatial perceptions that, if anything, connect more to my proprioceptive sense. Like as if I could imagine myself being some sort of tentacled animal and reaching all over to feel a complex structure in an instant. Or at times of extreme focus, I can almost feel myself as an amorphous charge spreading out (breadth-first) through a complex graph or maze.