R apply factor objects

I would like to apply the factor function over each row of an R dataframe. So, I'd like to get a array of factor type objects. However, when I:

apply(df, 1, factor)

I don't get that thing. What am I misunderstanding about apply or factor?

data:

dput(df)

structure(list(flip..1. = c("heads", "heads"), flip..2. = c("tails", "heads"), flip..3. = c("heads", "tails"), flip..4. = c("tails", "tails"), flip..5. = c("heads", "tails"), flip..6. = c("tails", "heads"), flip..7. = c("heads", "heads"), flip..8. = c("heads", "tails"), flip..9. = c("tails", "tails"), flip..10. = c("heads", "heads")), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, -2L))

code:

rowwise_factors <- apply(df, 1, factor)
# rowwise_factors seems to be a matrix of characters, or some such, not an array of factor objects.

expected_output:

dput(expected)

list(structure(c(flip..1. = 1L, flip..2. = 2L, flip..3. = 1L, flip..4. = 2L, flip..5. = 1L, flip..6. = 2L, flip..7. = 1L, flip..8. = 1L, flip..9. = 2L, flip..10. = 1L), .Label = c("heads", "tails"), class = "factor"), 
structure(c(flip..1. = 1L, flip..2. = 1L, flip..3. = 2L, 
flip..4. = 2L, flip..5. = 2L, flip..6. = 1L, flip..7. = 1L, 
flip..8. = 2L, flip..9. = 2L, flip..10. = 1L), .Label = c("heads", "tails"), class = "factor"))

What am I misunderstanding here, and also how do I make this work?

W.R.T. CLOSE: these don't answer my question, as I would like to apply this ROW-WISE, not COLUMN-WISE. Simply transposing my data.frame doesn't make the cited solutions work.

This works in R-4.1 and newer, as that is when simplify= was added to apply(.):

apply(df, 1, factor, levels = c("heads", "tails"), simplify = FALSE)
# [[1]]
#  flip..1.  flip..2.  flip..3.  flip..4.  flip..5.  flip..6.  flip..7.  flip..8.  flip..9. flip..10. 
#     heads     tails     heads     tails     heads     tails     heads     heads     tails     heads 
# Levels: heads tails
# [[2]]
#  flip..1.  flip..2.  flip..3.  flip..4.  flip..5.  flip..6.  flip..7.  flip..8.  flip..9. flip..10. 
#     heads     heads     tails     tails     tails     heads     heads     tails     tails     heads 
# Levels: heads tails

This works in R before 4.1:

lapply(asplit(df, 1), factor, levels = c("heads", "tails"))
# [[1]]
#  flip..1.  flip..2.  flip..3.  flip..4.  flip..5.  flip..6.  flip..7.  flip..8.  flip..9. flip..10. 
#     heads     tails     heads     tails     heads     tails     heads     heads     tails     heads 
# Levels: heads tails
# [[2]]
#  flip..1.  flip..2.  flip..3.  flip..4.  flip..5.  flip..6.  flip..7.  flip..8.  flip..9. flip..10. 
#     heads     heads     tails     tails     tails     heads     heads     tails     tails     heads 
# Levels: heads tails