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Thursday, August 25, 2016

How shall the Google Android O be named?

As I was using  a free moment to read a little about the new features of Google's most recent android, the Nougat, it suddenly hit me, that no so long into the future, Google is going to face a major obstacle. How shall the Google Android O be named? 

After all, there aren't that many globally recognized candies in the letter O.... recalling google's request for help regarding N - 
- an effort which has ended with the Nougat, it seems that it is high time to start pondering. 

Thinking about all sorts of pastries and candies is never a really bad thing. The answer shall not be found in the next wonderful collection:
An assortment of pastries and cakes in a pâtisserie
This image was licensed by a CC-by-SA 3.0 license on wikipedia
But wikipedia's fascinating article -  list of desserts can be very helpful. Going over it, it seems that a
solution may be found in one of the next interesting cuisines:
  • Ontbijtkoek - a Dutch spiced rye cake. 
  • Oblaat - a Japanese candy, made of a layer of starch that wraps candies
  • Orange jelly candy finger-sized sticks of soft jelly candy (a candy from Hong Kong)
  • Ozark pudding - a dry fruit custard with nuts (from the United States)
  • Oliebol - fried dumplings of a mixed origin (with a strong dutch-belgian ancestry claim)
  • Ox tongue pastry - a Chinese Doughnut of sorts 
  • Orange Whip - a sweet cocktail (most probably from the United States)
Naming is not always as important as one may claim in marketing. As amusing as gather stuff for this post was, It seems that nowadays, code names for operating system releases are of interest to the very few. In the public's point of view, Apple and Google may may very well choose to call their operating system new version "the one with the 5,734 updates" or "the one that finally solves that irritating limitation" and the same crowds shall flow. After all, they are all searching the hardware innovations. The software is more of an enabler. 

And yet, it seems that Android Nougat has brought some interesting news with it. I suspect I would have called it "the one with the ability to display multiple apps on-screen at once in a split-screen view".

Has multi-tasking finally arrived to the smartphones world ? Considering the replies one used to get on the iOS world not so recently (this reply regarding ipad and iphone or this support discussion on the Apple website), it seems that it wasn't a minute too soon...