Name: Unsending.
Age: Brand new, long overdue.
Appearance: Like nothing ever happened.
That’s sort of paradoxical. And also sort of untrue. When you unsend a message using the new feature in Apple’s iMessage, the non-recipient is notified of your change of heart.
In my day, if you wanted to unsend a message, you got your arm stuck in the postbox and the fire service had to come. For years, the sending of a regrettable iMessage was just as perilous; it simply could not be retrieved.
But now it can? In the next iteration of iMessage, you simply click “undo send” and the message will disappear.
What if the other person has already seen it? Tough. There is, as yet, no such thing as an “unsee” button.
What constitutes a regrettable message these days? Something written in anger, perhaps, or with ill-judged humour. It could be a message inadvertently altered by autocorrect, or any text sent after consuming alcohol.
You should never, ever text people when you’re drunk. I agree completely, except when I’m drunk. Then it seems like the whole point of existence.
What if you have painstakingly composed a witty aperçu, only to discover after sending it that you have misspelled arseface? In that case, you might avail yourself of the new iMessage edit button, due with the iOs 16 update planned for the autumn. It will allow you to fix mistakes and resend. “Embarrassing typos can be a thing of the past!’ says Apple’s Craig Federighi.
No more asterisked corrections appended? No, but the repaired message will let the recipient know it has been edited.
Is this skin-saving option only available on iMessage? WhatsApp is testing an edit button, but with no hint of a launch date. The Telegram app has had an edit feature for years.
Why isn’t there something like this for Twitter? Twitter has long resisted the idea, but in April it announced it had been working on an edit button for a year.
A year? Why is it taking so long? As a public forum, Twitter presents specific challenges. What do you do with the responses to a tweet that has since been changed? What if people use the edit button for evil?
Why not, they use every other feature of Twitter for evil. Would you like to retract that comment?
Yes. Too late.
Do say: “Erasing the past: it’s the future!”
Don’t say: “Did you get those pics of my clock? (edited).”
