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.