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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

> Also, if you're the kind of person who has a Synology, it means you had to buy a NAS, drives, and setup all the associated machinery for Time Machine over your network

I don’t understand why people think this is complicated or limited only to highly technical people.

NAS units are popular with consumers now, not just tech people. They buy them with drives installed and they come with instructions to set up backups with Windows and Mac.

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I get what you're saying. I will only quibble that the consumers in the market for a NAS, regardless of ease-of-setup, is still bordering technically inclined. My mother-in-law has enough trouble with her iPhone, let alone a server-type-device that she needs to administer.

I would imagine a more typical consumer would be buying a USB or Thunderbolt connected drive and following the prompts to set it up.

My impression is that companies like Backblaze and other backup-as-a-service solutions are more consumer-popular because it externalizes the complexity and pitfalls like the author is experiencing.

> I would imagine a more typical consumer would be buying a USB or Thunderbolt connected drive and following the prompts to set it up.

The problem is that the typical consumer with a laptop never uses it in a docked configuration and just plugs it in to charge.

You may as well tell someone they need to regularly plug a USB hard drive into their iphone to back up their photos.

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