I can’t really pretend to know what affordances is beyond the technical definition. It’s a confusing and intangible concept that forces you to ‘think outside the box’. Affordances has this very general definition: ‘the relationship between the user and the object’ but in a sentence, the word almost substitutes the word ‘allows’ or ‘enables’: this new phone I got on the weekend affords messaging, listening to music, and calling…right?
I’ve had an iPhone 6 for about five years if memory serves me right. And I had only gotten a case for it about two months ago. Not a scratch or a dent (okay maybe some small dents and scratches) and definitely no cracked screen in all those years. It’s something I’m pretty proud of considering my clumsy history and bruise scattered body (in which makes me wonder ‘how did I get that???’). But, as with any phone, it did start to wear down, freeze, and freak out. Just generally be unresponsive. So I thought it might be high time to buy a new phone.
When I got my new iPhone I had to give up the right to have a headphone jack. The XS still affords listening to music and videos sure, but it definitely has physical constraints put in place ‘to make the iPhone thinner’. In reality, these physical restraints force you to give up any other headphones you’ve grown accustomed to, and furthermore, forces you to get the dongle to connect it in.
Now, when my mom got her iPhone and had to adjust to this, the box provided her with the dongle as well as the headphones with the lightning rod (if memory serves me correctly). So I’m here looking at my iPhone thinking ‘Apple you sneaky bastard’ because they have literally phased out other devices so you’ll have to use theirs. And I can’t pretend that the Apple AirPods don’t look appealing to me personally, but with my habit of losing things, I don’t think we would get along well. So they will force you to get their products–either buy a dongle on its own or get the Apple AirPods if you want to listen to music or watch videos privately.
This isn’t the first time Apple has placed a physical constraint on their products. In fact, the introduction of the lightning rod was quite a big thing back then. I remember getting my iPod 5 and marvelling at how small the charger was. But the thing Apple wants you to believe is that all of this is done for the benefit of the user–that they are a user-centered company and care about our feedback and use. But I don’t necessarily think that’s true at all for almost any company. They want to make money. If you break that lightning rod, you can’t go somewhere else to get a general charger for cheap, you have to go to Apple to get a new one. Physical constraints are always being used in technological devices for the benefit of the business.