I believe that the target market for this equipment is small / medium size enterprises that need a solution for local storage of whatever information they process in their day-to-day operations. So, they won't have a system administrator on staff. They would rather try to assemble their computer system themselves or pay someone once to put things together. In this context, having a pre-built component that one can plug into the larger system is what customers would be looking for.

It's similar to the days when buying a PC would involve either finding a friend who could read the specs from the computer shop, make a list and assemble the PC once all the components are bought, or you'd buy a build from the shop (with some extra markup for the service). And today most PC users have moved on to laptops if not just even phones.

Most people will use what's commercially available. Today, most NAS users won't have an old PC case with HDD mounts laying around. They will have to buy something, and that something will likely be a pre-built NAS, the kind this article is written about. And similar to how laptops are a form of enshitification of desktops, these NAS boxes are too. Removing modularity drives the price down, but also doesn't allow the users the ability to repair and to study the product they own.

People aren't "crazy" about buying pre-built NAS boxes. It's what there is, they buy what's available.