Time Machine should be fantastic - hourly incremental backups all taking place in the background with history going back as far as you could possible want. So why is it so shit? Backing up to any sort of networked storage, including Apple’s own apparently, is going to fail every few months as it’s ‘sparse bundles’ (WTF are sparse bundles?) get their knickers in a twist at the slightest network hiccough . Each time requires you wipe all that gorgeous history and start a whole new backup, which takes hours and hours. You could back up to USB storage but really, for a laptop that is used on the lap, that’s more of a pain in the bum than a viable solution.
Apple have known about this for years. Apple have done fuck all to fix this for years. Fuck you Apple.
My Time Machine backups work fine, have for years. I’ve not experienced the sparse bundles error, though my network definitely hiccoughs now and again. I use it on three different iMacs in my house. One is an Apple Time Capsule, the others on other branded USB external drives.