What effort? It runs automatically every hour. They include that they buy a new drive on which backups are written and archive the old one. Presumably they buy drives that are big enough to have a full backup and a reasonable about of space for the diffs (a drive 50% larger than the one being backed up is typically sufficient).

Since Time Machine is in addition to other backup methods, they don't need to make an effort to keep a Time Machine drive offsite.

What I meant is, you have to physically connect the drive, unless you're using a Network drive, and I wanted to know how their setup works. I tried setting up Time Machine via Network Drive once and it didn't work so well, so I'm trying to learn.

Time Machine has been the only way I've been able to get the majority of my family's devices to consistently back up. Thankfully it's a mostly-mac house. Have an always-on Debian machine which acts as a NAS. Install and configure netatalk and avahi.

Edit /etc/netatalk/afp.conf:

    [Time Machine]
    path = /path/to/backups
    time machine = yes

And you're done. Don't lift a finger to do backups ever again.

Thank you!

I run a usb cable from the back of my imac to a drive hidden underneath my desk. It is effectively zero maintenance, because time machine removes old backups to make space for the new.

For laptops I would aim for a setup where the drive is connected to whatever dock solution is in place. MacOS would backup automatically while the laptop was docked.

Using Time Machine via network is the only way I have ever used it. I initially used Apple Time Capsule (RIP), and now just use a Time Machine compatible NAS.

Too complicated. Just connect a drive via USB.

Even with a Time Capsule, Time Machine can be annoying. I had to turn automatic backups off because for some reason every backup was hundreds of MB. It took my 2017 MBP 15-30 mins to complete each backup, which meant that 25-50% of the time my computer was on, it was backing up. This meant the fan was going and the computer slowed down.

Review your backup config, because it sounds like you're accidentally picking up something you shouldn't be.

This happened to me at one point and the culprit ended up being that I had failed to exclude the folder holding my VMs.

The current TM drive is plugged into the hub on my desk.

In these COVID times, my laptop rarely leaves that desk, but even when it does there's only one cable to plug it all -- monitors, ethernet, various other peripherals, speakers, power -- into my laptop.

not OP, but yes, I backup both our Mac machines (TimeMachine) and my Linux machine (restic) to a Synology NAS that is in turn backed up to a cloud. I ended up using the Synology cloud because the setup was easy and they have a datacenter in the EU.

Yes, time machine can run over the network. It really is easy.