No, really, version numbers within a broader brand that can indicate incompatibility are not something non-technical users with any familiarity with modern consumer society are unfamiliar with.

I get that techies sometimes have preferences for perfect and eternal backward compatibility within a named product line, but trying to pass this off with “how will you explain this to non-techies”, and then treating non-techies as both more ignorant and more concerned with technical details than they are, is not a good way to promote that preference.