I actually kind of saw this coming. I think the premise is that someone could use the edit feature with nefarious intentions. For example, I could send my landlord an iMessage asking “Do I still owe rent for this month, if so, how much do I owe you? ” and they could respond with “Yes, all $1600” and then I could go back and edit the message to read “Did you get my envelope with $1600 in cash to pay rent this month?” Then when I’m in court facing eviction I can use that as evidence to show the judge I paid in cash and he acknowledged receipt.And here I say it again, how is iMessage this far behind when it’s this critical to their platform strategy. And then it allows stupid things - like viewing the original message after editing.
Exactly what value does that offer?
They are cementing in their demise.
May not be the best example, but I think that type of potential scenario is why they’d want to have some kind of edit history. If it was an honest error and you didn’t want them to see what you sent at all (if they didn’t already read it) then just unsend and resend a new message.