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Comment by jtc331 | Hacker News Reader

If people don’t know it (at some level like intuition), why is that everyone I know (including non-tech 55 year olds) see the green bubble and know the other person has android instead of an iPhone?

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It just means the sms client can tell the difference. How exactly could be anything. They don't know enough to even know that this would require two seperate back-end services rather than the same back-end service with some optional extra special data added to the transaction. They don't even think of the words "client" or "back-end" or "transaction" like I just said. The fact that their iphone can tell that the other phone is not using imessage is not remarkable at all to them, or me for that matter.

Sure, but by that (correct) reasoning the fact that it’s SMS (as a system) or some other system is similarly irrelevant to them and not the terms they think in.

Right. Another way I though to to say it is "What do you think the average person's concept is for how their phone knows a txt came from Bob vs Alice?" IE, how does my txt app know to display your phone number instead of some other phone number?

Answer: "idk, tech magic." They know there is some way that isn't actually magic, they know there are mechanics, but they don't know or need to know what the mechanics are.

How it knows to display a green bubble or a blue bubble is exactly like that. That's what I mean by it's not a remarkable thing to anyone that the txt app does this. Q: How? A: Somehow. They don't see it and think "Wow, this proves that there are two unrelated back-end systems."

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