That tells a story. I bet its something like this:

1. There was a small, smart team which made time machine in the first place. They did good work. Building time machine required some pretty deep integrations into macos that not many people understood.

2. Years passed. The people who built time machine moved to greener pastures. At google and samsung you mostly get promoted for releasing new products. Not maintaining old ones. I wouldn't be surprised if its the same at apple. Over time, the people who made time machine left and were either replaced by more junior developers. Or weren't really replaced at all.

3. Random changes in the kernel break time machine regularly. Nobody is in charge of noticing breakage, or fixing it. Most people who care (and have the knowledge to fix it) have moved on.

I find things like this so odd from an organisational management perspective. Do companies not realise that features like time machine would have an ongoing maintenance cost? That someone would need to check that time machine still works with every release? Or is it just vibe based management out there? "I guess nobody works on that, and we don't test it. Oops whatever."

Every new manager who inherits a reputable product (anything, from software to food) is tempted by the idea of cutting costs drastically to the detriment of the product quality. While the product would be coasting on its prior reputation, the manager would get promoted for saving oodles of money, and promoted away from that product, or leave the company altogether. The one who comes next would take the blame, and handle the consequences.

I assume many managers resist this temptation, but someone yields with regularity.