To play devil's advocate, I can see the version numbering scheme contributing more attention to the lack of updates from OEMs from the average user. Although I have no empirical data to support it, I can imagine there's a lot of people that don't see new Android versions as "updates", but rather "editions" due to the dessert naming scheme. It's not immediately obvious to some of the people I know that their Galaxy phone, as an example, doesn't have the latest version of Android. Not too long ago, I've literally heard a friend say they have the "Lollipop edition of Android" and they were completely unaware they were two versions behind. They thought Pie and Oreo were simply alternative editions, depending on manufacturer.

I think the numbering scheme will be more obvious to the average user that they are behind from latest version of Android and that might add more pressure to OEMs (and carriers) to put more effort into updates.

Or Play Services could just pop up a notification that says "your phone hasn't received any security updates in 27 months and it's running a 3-year-old version of Android". Nah, that's too easy.

This comparison is a bit biased, you could compare IOS and Android naming which will be the same from now on "name - version number".

I think the cultural argument is not the most important one for this decision, the important point is that old naming is confusing to newcomers and customers since Android has a lot of disparities between devices and supported versions[1] whereas Apple can count on a very high rate of adoption for their new versions[2].

It is for sure a marketing move even if it hurts Android users who used to love this naming convention.

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/android/m... [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/macos/des...

> Pie isn't a dessert in some countries

"Pie" means foot in Spanish and it's pronounced something like "pee eh"

Edit: not sure why I'm being downvoted...

Also, Mexicans use "pay" to refer to a pie (not a foot).

To be fair, Apple's California naming is off-putting even for people in the US.

How so?

I use Apple products at work, and am otherwise not very invested in the world of Apple. I frequently will have to look up how to accomplish a task or get a particular piece of software working, and the author will assume that I'm familiar with where macOS <some place name> fits in the chronology vs. macOS <some other place name>, requiring me to look it up.

Worse for me than the Android dessert names were, since at least those were ordered.

People laughed at me when I mispronounced Mojave.

Didn't Chicken Pot Pie consumers boycott Android Pie?