I suspect that Mac backups just would not be profitable for Apple. That would be, on average, much more data than iPhones and iPads. It’s still lame that Apple isn’t providing a good solution here.
Yes, but to me the big advantage of a Time Capsule is that it can be connected to my router, which is always connected to my MacBook Pro via Ethernet, thus saving a port.
Also, compared to other drive enclosures with fans – and even some fanless ones – the Time Capsule is really, really quiet. Mine sits on my desk about 30 inches away from me and at that distance is completely silent. (I have to put my ear within about six inches to hear it at all.)
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It’s just data, and Apple charges for data. Apple could add a 4 TB tier to iCloud Drive, or introduce a new iCloud Mac Backup service that would offer unlimited data and be priced to account for the average size of Time Machine backups.
So the question becomes, how much would Apple need to charge to make it profitable while still offering a price that was compelling to users and competitive with services like Backblaze?
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Yes, but to me the big advantage of a Time Capsule is that it can be connected to my router, which is always connected to my MacBook Pro via Ethernet, thus saving a port.
I understand the advantages, particularly to consumers. Just pointing out the disadvantages to Apple, which is probably why they’ve stopped. Continuing to support a product that isn’t moving lots of windows consumers to Mac just probably isn’t worth it, and it’s one less thing to support.
I think that’s because they primarily focus on iCloud for storing content. Apple would have to charge users a hell of a lot more money to back up everything on a Mac in iCloud, and it would cost them a lot more to build out the service. It probably isn’t profitable enough at this point. I think this will change in the future.
Well, they already provide the ability to store your Documents and Desktop folder contents in your iCloud account. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to extend that so it backs up your entire home directory and any app installations that didn’t come from the App Store.
Billing you, of course, for the storage used by all this data.
I was actually intrigued by the Asus mesh Wi-Fi products – they were highly rated in one review I read the other day, after this was published. If you give this a go, I’d be interested in how well it performs. I’ve generally been an Eero fan, but better performance (allegedly), multigig LAN, built in network Time Machine support, and non-data-mining-company ownership might make it an attractive system for those choosing among mesh options.
My original complaint was not that Apple haven’t solved this for us, but that they haven’t made any efforts to persuade third-party manufacturers to fill the void. They boast of companies producing HomeKit-compatible products, presumably because it provides another rationale for buying Apple devices. Why don’t they license TM-compatible products for the same reason? It wouldn’t even cost them any money - they could probably charge manufacturers for providing technical support when developing their products.
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Strongly agree with this. Pretty much every third party product that exists is rolling their own, as a secondary feature for a NAS, enabled by what Linux enthusiasts have reverse engineered.
A Mac-centric vendor like LaCie (or anyone, really) could make a pretty good dedicated purpose network Mac backup product, or line of products, with Apple’s support, and I’d be telling every client to buy one.
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He wanted that in the 80’s. In 1996, before he was running the show again, he said to Fortune “If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth — and get busy on the next great thing.” Well, he did exactly that. Apple in 2022 makes ultraportable, easy to use, always-connected computers called iPhones, and the Mac product line is a legacy business that exists largely to support the iPhone business, and reap halo effect revenues from it. I think today’s Apple certainly still cares enough about the Mac to want to keep it competitive, but its priorities lay with iPhone.
And iPhones get automatically backed up to iCloud. Even if you have a terabyte of data. Or two terabytes on an iPad.
Because Apple has many very stringent requirements for HomeKit, and developers have to be certified before they even get started:
The whole development, manufacturing and is strictly regulated, and developers and manufacturers need to be approved. There are guidelines even for interfaces. HomeKit final products go through an extensive testing process before they are finally approved and certified to be sold.
Apple does not certify third party hard drives:
Like I mentioned before, Apple developed and sold LaserWriters until the market was flooded with equally high quality printer models that were selling for much less. The profits were no longer there. It’s the same old story here.
I agree with David. And add…Apple doesn’t want to invest in wifi networking or backup solutions. TimeMachine is all we get.
, first with iOS, Apple has hedged that users will pay a flat fee to save (and share) their photos. Then with iCloud, their documents, contacts, desktop (Oh how many times did the MacOS upgrade fool your users to put their desktop and documents in the iCloud?). This is why, there is no more Time Capsule. And when you spec out $399 for a 2TB Time Capsule (discontinued), versus $120/yr for 2TB iCloud+ plan (and Hide email, relay, homekit video) just a matter of time when they offer 3, or more TB storage for $14.99/$19.99 month… Apple wants monthly income. And its getting it with AppleTV+. iCloud+, iTunes and iOS plans. And rightly so, for most, its ideal. And if they have internet, it should just work. Restoring? Bah, let’s talk about getting a new mac! 
Solutions some of you offer are simple (WD My Cloud has some software issues, reliability and likely WD green or blue drives…I don’t trust them-anyone crack one open?). Others solutions are expensive (TrueNAS, Synology NAS, MacMini headless with Ministack or external storage via Tbolt/USB-C) or too difficult for average user. But…ZFS is the way. Not cheap, but man, the storage volumes … 
I just read on the Asus Mesh/wifi 6 Router RT-AX86U that nothing is mentioned on Time Machine support, and any USB storage drive has a 2TB limit. One might want to check with Asus since it hasn’t updated its Time Machine Support document since 2019. I won’t recommend since I’m not familiar. I’m stuck with Orbi, and on my LAN, have a 2013 Time Capsule that I replaced the 2TB HDD with enterprise-grade 4TB HDD. (oh, I also own CCC 6.0.5 and under Catalina, clone my main SSD weekly to internal HDD on an old 2012 Macmini…that may have future as TimeMachine share box…always have that option!)
So… I recommend 
most use a cloud service (Code42, BackBlaze, etc) as secondary, with a USB-C external, as primary TM drive, to attach as needed (if users have portables). It doesn’t fit everyone, but for most, its least worry. Many I dealt with that are Mac Only, have moved to iCloud+, along with a Time Machine backup to USB-C drive they “schedule-a-reminder” to attach with portables. With desktop, it stays attached. Remember, external USB-C drives (HDD are larger than the SSDs, but SSDs are faster to restore from/backup to) are cheap. I mean, under $70 for 2TB.
Apple really showed their cloud plans when they discontinued wireless LAN (Time Capsule and Airport Express) products forcing most to other brand routers, along with Apple Music, AppleTV+, iCloud+, iOS Photos subscriptions.
Would it have been awesome and innovative if Apple sold a HomePod+ that was Wifi 6 mesh with HomePod Mini+ as Access points/Mesh repeaters, and the main unit, a speaker/router and had optional 2TB/4TB M.2 sticks inside, and could backup to HomePod+ iCloud plan?
We know that would never happen 
.
Note: we could debate backups forever. And there are dozens of alternatives, both local and cloud. But I think we can agree, Apple removed a prime solution for user to have easy, local, backup. Atleast Time Machine is included and works for most, and allows migrations to new macs. Let’s hope they don’t offer some TimeMachine+ as the only future solution… 
ASUS provides horrible looking documentation when you dig deep. I believe that they may be bad translations from the original Japanese. Anyway, there is a later version from 2020 of the 2019 Time Machine documentation. From CNet, here’s an article, written when Apple discontinued the Airport line of replacement routers, with several of them able to use an external disk for the Time Machine. I suggest looking at currently available routers from the appropriate manufacturers to see if they would fulfill the requirements of the original poster.
By the way, I recently obtained a 2TB SSD to back up my 1TB laptop and plan to use the snapshot feature of CCC to replace the Time Machine.
As mentioned earlier one can format drives of more than 2 TB in ext4 on most ASUS routers. Such a USB attached ext4 formatted HD drive on my ASUS RT-AX86U has now provided rock solid Time Machine service for two laptops for months (I never had that reliability with either a Time Capsule or an Airport Extreme).
However one thing that likely has helped is that I don’t use the stock ASUS firmware but the Merlin firmware.
Re: networked Airport AC with ext drive.
You can perform the initial backup with the drive attached directly to a Mac and then select the backup it creates, once it’s plugged in to the Airport AC.
Downside with the AirportAC-extHD is that it is often unable to connect and you have to restart the Airport. However, I’ve found that powering the Airport via a simple mains-adapter-timer, so that it is powered off/on during the night, solves this issue to a large extent. TM caters to sudden loss of connection, so it’s not been an issue for me. I’m fairly sure that this is a network address issue and restarting gives it a new address, which is fine until it’s not.
Re: My Cloud Home.
I bought one for backups from Amazon some years ago. It was a disaster. Totally unreliable and I had to send it back. I reckoned it was just not made for Mac. Perhaps that’s changed since?
Re: Networked Mac
I used this for years, with an old ethernet attached Mini, in a fireproof safe in the basement. It worked flawlessly and being over ethernet, was actually quite fast. I managed it via Remote Desktop, which was occasionally a bit awkward and once or twice I had to remove it and attach it to a monitor to manage some settings. I also used it for Chronosync backups, which worked flawlessly via their Chronosync Agent software. Any old Mini should work, or an old portable, which would be easier with having a monitor that can just be turned down/off for most of the time.
Also NB, that Mac portables keep a backup locally. So recently changed files are available and very fast to load. There is also ‘versioning’ in apps like Pages, which is part of the TM system. Very cool.
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I have Chronosync backing up all of my various drives and content areas, either mirroring drives onto each other or onto my WD PR4100. I have Time Machine set to backup on that WD raid, it’s working flawlessly, but my main tool is Chronosync, so versatile and useful.
While not a complete solution…and I agree that Time Machine on a laptop really needs to be via wifi and not via plugging in the drive since it’s a laptop…when one finally just acknowledges that TM over wifi to a .dmg file on a TC or another Mac just doesn’t work properly…then if you do have another Mac that is always running just hang a drive off of there and create a share. Don’t use this for a TM network backup though…since it doesn’t reliably work…get a copy of CarbonCopyCloner and set it up to do the same thing that TM would normally do…and it just works.
I’m not saying that TM over wifi does not work for anybody…just that it is unreliable and fails for inexplicable reasons. For instance…my last attempt at trying it…I set up 2 different shares on my iMac that were configured and permissioned identically and set one laptop to use one share for TM and the other one to use the other share. All machines running up to date Monterey and both laptops are M1 models. The one for my laptop worked for a week and then broke. The one for my wife’s laptop worked fine for the initial backup but then failed with an error message that made no sense at all. The result was my CCC roll your own TM over wifi solution.
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I’m interested in the CCC approach. I have a 10-year-old MacBook Air that we could leave plugged in somewhere. I think it can run High Sierra, which supports APFS, and it has a Thunderbolt 2 port, so with the right adapters, we could presumably connect it to a couple of backup drives. If we need to restore the whole system, does Migration Assistant work with CCC clones?
MA can directly copy back your data from a CCC clone.
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/i-want-clone-my-entire-hard-drive-new-hard-drive-or-new-machine
Yep…works fine for a locally attached drive while restoring…I haven’t tried to restore over the network since local is much faster. Reinstall macOS, run MA with the drive plugged in and pick the drive.