I'm finding myself questioning exactly how these an be used beyond what is written. For example, if an apparition exists as a spirit can an animist send their apparition to go spy on a location for them? Can the decide to attune to an apparition of the Vanguard of Roaring Waters in the middle of a desert when they have never bound one before, or do they need to find a rushing river to befriend and bind to one? Does an apparition hang around an animist when they are not attuned (for example if you enter the desert with an attuned vanguard, do they stick around after you attune to something else).
In short, how much are these apparitions NPCs and how much are they simply a game mechanic?
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Very similar to eidolons, apparitions are NPCs as much as the GM and player agree.
Now this should not be used by the player to try and get mechanics advantages over what is RAW.
And similarly for the GM to force mechanics disadvantages over what is RAW.
Unless both agree beforehand with full understanding and an eye to the consequences on game balance and also on the most important balance of fun to be had by all.
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An apparition can't actually leave your body while it's bonded to you for the day barring a few animist feats that spell out exactly what your apparition is doing. And the information your apparitions bring you from their time prior to being bonded to you today is covered by the lore skills.
What about when an apparition isn't bonded to you? Well that's a little less clear.Lost Omens: The Unseen World will give us new insights into the daily life of spirits. There's no suggestion you can command them, but to what extent your apparitions are NPCs or secondary characters roleplayed by the PC is up to you and the GM.
As far as your specific questions go, I'll try to give my two cents with the caveat that Unseen World may contradict me in a few months
Spirits tend to be tied to locations, people, or objects, so spying seems impractical. You could try to bond to a new spirit that might know things, but I'd represent that through the lore skills it grants
I would not be inclined to restrict an Animists ability to bind spirits by where they've been. The world is *old*, and deserts haven't always been deserts, to use your example The Sahara was once green and wet, with the prehistoric humans who lived there hunting and fishing.
What a spirit does when not bound is up to the GM. Whether the spirit(s) you connect with each time are the same or different is up to you and the GM. To use a canon example, the iconic amimist Samo's custodian of Groves and Gardens seems to always be her grandmother in the form of a stag, but she seems to change our her other spirits as she travels- One story references her bonding to an Orc warrior spirit while in Belkzen, for instance.
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An apparition cannot, by itself, be sent by "an animist... to go spy on a location for them." However, that is specifically what the Spirit Familiar feat exists for...
Apart from that, apparitions are essentially tied to the animist to provide additional spell capability.
When I look at the spirit familiar feat what stands out to me is that they *physically manifest*, which is a much different thing than being sent through the spirit realm to immaterially view a remote location.
Obviously any such ability would be heavily constrained by the nature of the spirit which is bound.
Part of this, in context, is that I am looking at an alternate world design where apparitions might also be divine in nature, and I hadn't seen anything in the RAW indicating that attuned spirits were bound to the animist's body.