This has been Apple's way since times of yore.
This has a parallel to the late 90s when Apple dropped floppy disk support when it was still very much mainstream. Even the Apple II to Macintosh transition was abrupt and alienating to some in the ecosystem.
The justification is:
It makes supporting the new features and devices easier, as it focuses resources, at the expense of legacy support.
You, as an Apple ecosystem participant, pay up for the "Apple Tax" (again, a term that has been around for decades).
Just because. Any myriad of reasons could have spurred the change, from internal team tech talent reshufflings to whims in the marketing department.
This is how Apple is, and how Apple has been for much of their existence. The anger can probably be justified, but you definitely shouldn't be shocked.
May I suggest you pay for the higher tier cloud backup service on a monthly basis. Apple didn't get to a multi trillion dollar valuation out of good will exclusively. I hear service revenue is a major priority internally...
Lucky the timing is good, I just ordered a bunch of parts to build a new TrueNAS 5 bay 3.5" server. I'll guess I'll just point Time Machine at it.
Honestly, this is probably just to push icloud backup. Why sell one time capsule, when you can sell a service that never stops being charged for?
Floppies were terrible, but time capsules aren't that.
IRL a $Trillion dollar company can certainly have resources make the minuscule updates to keep support.
> a $Trillion dollar company can certainly have resources
You would think, but look at this whole Liquid Glass thing - they can't get something simple like contrast right. On the other hand, they arguably put out the best consumer chips in the industry.
Seems dysfunctional, like every other large corp.
Time Machine does not support backing up to iCloud though. Maybe it's coming.
Makes sense to warn people now and then sell a solution to the problem they made