I'm sure there is one (administratively) responsible person in the end, but I haven't every had a large-scale design lean on just 1 person or have very low-quantity lynchpins.

I doubt Apple's inner workings are simplistic in such a way that one person with some sort of clout pushed this with no further thought.

At the end of the day this is just speculation but purely negative speculation is just some form of populism/FUD and makes everything worse.