You're right, in the grand scheme of things, buying a new disk every few years isn't a major hardship but obstacle. My point wasn't really about the cost of hardware or not being able to solve problem, but rather the brittleness of the software, documentation and usabillity.

The difficult backup migration is just one symptom of a larger problem: Time Machine isn't robust. It has sharp edges and can fail in ways that are hard to recover from, like the network backup I lost. That lack of reliability and breaking changes not just in backup software but in whole ecosystem is the real issue for me. Apple "obsoletes" things in its own timeframe regardless of userbase. I've got enormous respect for Apple products and people who are building them and with them. I wish Apple would have "LTS" version of MacOS and better documentation - often tools exist but aren't easy accessible.