I kind of understand how a UPC code works, but how is a QR code capable of “storing more data”?
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An important part of this to recognize is that a normal bar code doesn’t really store much info. It has a number, which then has to go into someone’s database to find the details for what the number represents. There’s nothing wrong with that, but they all require third-party access to be useful.
A QR code instead has all of the data in the image itself, as others in this thread have explained very well. The cool part is that *no one owns that data*. It doesn’t need to go to some other source to look it up, and no entity controls what data is in there. Google and Apple and others have scanners, but those literally pull the data from the code and then do what’s requested (often opening their browser to the URL from the code).
This is why I rather dislike things like the Snapchat QR codes; they’re not bad, per se, but they’re proprietary and require Snapchat’s database for them to work, not unlike a normal bar code.
As a fan of the open internet (RSS, etc), I like the concept of QR codes being something that no big entity can own.
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