It's like how you say "How are you" when you really don't care but it's just how you start a conversation.
The "I'm sorry you feel this way" is quite a recent phenomenon. It started showing up in public apologies by companies and celebrities, purely for PR. It's basically a deflective euphemism for "I'm sorry that you don't like whatever happened" without really admitting culpability, sidestepping all responsibility.
With that said: I don't even know if the author (Kiki) is a native english speaker, since she's part of other language translation groups, so it might be 100% without intent. But that's how a lot of people perceive it today.
"I'm sorry I did that" is an actual apology.
To be clear, I'm agreeing with you. I think that the former version emerged as it's litigation proof. Corporate PR can say that without it being an admission of anything if whatever they fucked up results in a lawsuit.
It has spread to personal communications from corporate ones and it's now so prevalent that it is possible someone might use it and actually mean a real apology. But it's ... tainted.