Macworld:
Why on earth would you want to use your iPhone’s camera to scan a two-dimensional block-and-dot code? How could this possibly have a benefit worth the trouble? Why would Apple have any interest in building this in as an automatic feature within its Camera app?
Ask folks in China—and Japan, where advertisers, handset makers, and cell carriers pioneered 2D codes over 15 years ago. Apple says its listening to the Chinese market in adding 2D code scanning, but the benefits will be there for users worldwide.
QR codes are an interesting lesson in the differences between users in the “western world” versus those in Asia in particular. QR codes really haven’t taken off much here but they are a big part of the user experience in places like China.
Asia is an interesting market. They have tech-savvy beggars accepting donations with QR codes on their smartphones, while many companies still rely on fax machines and people still buy CD’s!
Ugh. I like to ask the occasional client that includes one in, say, a brochure, what their typical response rate is for those things.
We have more in common than we think.
They’re still “robot barf”.
I’ve only ever used one to set up Google Authenticator.
At work we use QR codes in our printed textbooks to let students go to the same web pages that our e-learning send students. That is, to watch videos, or see web pages that expand on the lesson. Obviously, the printed page is not going to be showing videos any time soon. So this is useful for students who prefer to study via printed textbooks. And our students have forced us to keep printing the textbooks, even if they are in the e-learning program (on Blackboard) simply because they prefer print to digital for reference. Nearly 85 percent of our students on e-learning want print as well. We thought we would have killed off print five years ago. But nope. We give our students what they want.
Long past time Apple included this within the OS, rather than as an add on. The need to find an appropriate App is a barrier to the spontaneous adoption of this means of information transfer. While other tools have been developed, many are not as simply implemented as the QR code.