Some anecdotal bits.

Backups with Catalina, Big Sur and now Monterey ain’t the beast they used to be.

APFS, amoung other things (like any-volume, any-time) also create a hidden partition for your OS. This is mostly for security, but for whatever reason, it’s there.

In a normal sense of “backup” you cannot back it up, as the backup software does not see it at all.

Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) is currently offering -Apple’s OWN- work around for this, which can be accessed by control-clicking on the destination. When/if Apple decides to do away that convenience, then the only way to “backup” a drive will be to block-clone it using a hardware duplicator. These are inexpensive and simple to run, but you’re cloning an entire drive, and not making multiple backups on a single drive, of course.

Backup software comes in three flavors: full, differential and incremental. See here for an explanation: https://spanning.com/blog/types-of-backup-understanding-full-differential-incremental-backup/. It’s basically variations on how a restorable full copy is created.

Some backup software will allow, just like Time Machine, you keep multiple versions of updated software (aka “incremental” backups. CCC offers to save old copies of files, for example.

Upshot? Some software will take care of most everything you need, although they will all take some effort to restore should you need to do that.

A drive clone, of course, will be instantly bootable, with no “restoration” necessary (although it will only be as current as the time you did the clone.)

OK: all that said, the way it works now is that you backup just the data volume of your drive, and the hidden OS volume is not backed up. Obviously you cannot boot the data volume, but it IS pretty simple to keep it up-to-date, using schedule with softare like CCC, Arg and so on. That makes it pretty much like TimeMachine.

If “it hits the fan” and you need to restore, the way you do that now is to power off the machine, and then either:

Apple silicon

Turn on your Mac and continue to press and hold the power button until you see the startup options window. Click the gear icon labeled Options, then click Continue.

Intel processor

Turn on your Mac and immediately press and hold Command (⌘)-R until you see an Apple logo or other image.

Then, select the option to reinstall the OS.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

Having decades of experience with “the old way” of reinstalling the OS on a Mac, I naturally -dreaded- the prospect of doing this.

BUT, it turns out that it’s fast, simple and painless, not to mention “Apple approved”. It will get things right.

Then you just restore your data volume, if needed, and you’re good to go.

In other words, you may not need multiple restore volumes. Of course, there are exceptions to this generality. For example, I personally have a need for a removable, bootable drive as a security blanket for when I’m making “iffy” changes to my built-in nVME boot drive.

So: not only is APFS different, but the backup and restore process is different as well. My own take on it is that Apple has improved it. The average user, who has TimeMachine running can blissfully ignore everthing and restore successfully when needed. The more advanced user get the joy of multiple, expanding volumes and a complete Apple-approved restoration of the OS.

Overall, things are different, but better, IMHO.

hth

Tracy