Responsible Engineers are a thing in hardware engineering.

It’s less of making scapegoat to blame, and rather a person who has been empowered to call the shots on their product, and entrusted with knowing their product or domain inside -out like the back of their hand. If something goes wrong, you ask for the RE/DRI so you can get the person who is supposed to have all the answers, well, answer.

I think there is a clear difference between being responsible for something, and being blamed for something. There may also be overlap. My experience has been the anti blame culture (which is a good thing) has been twisted into a lack of ownership and responsibility in some orgs (which is a bad thing).

In many cases, the first step in "how to solve the issue" is "who is responsible for this?"

It doesn't have to have anything to do with blame.

Yes, as in who knows this component more in-depth than anyone else in the company and is best able to solve any problem with it?

The intent is not (or shouldn't be) to find a scapegoat—it's so others know WHO exactly is going to help resolve the issue.

That said, from what I've heard, culture at Apple varies heavily by group and manager. There are plenty of horror stories!

I kinda took it as more of a find the person immediately, understand the situation and why they made those choices, then find a path forward. It probably can be used nefariously, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

If you want to solve an issue, it makes sense to reach out to the person who is responsible for the domain the issue is in. Nothing in the sentence you quoted implied any amount of blame.