emphasis on periodically? you'll always lose data between now and the last daily or hourly backup. Not great.

Or I could just remove the SSD and not have that tradeoff.

So my options are either a constant network connection or always keeping an external drive plugged in assuming I want to maintain 0 loss. Great! That's totally easier than just being able to remove the SSD.

What do you do if your laptop gets wet or lost? Or if someone runs it over? There’s not a ton of instances where the system won’t boot but somehow the SSD has survived.

Besides, the recent storage Apple has used is all encrypted with the keys stored in the Secure Enclave. Data cannot be recovered if you don’t have the board (even on the Mac Pro, IIRC).

Of the 2 laptop failures I've experienced both of them wouldn't boot but the data was recoverable because the drive didn't fail. Only in a vanishingly small percent of cases is the computer so destroyed that the SSD is also destroyed. The secure enclave is just another failing on Apple's part. If I'm encrypting my data it should be with keys I control. Apple should have a backup plan for users. Not doing so is negligent.

you should be using the cloud for everything, obviously /s

More seriously, I had not considered the secure enclave angle, which is worrisome.

Furthermore why bother encrypting anything if you then upload everything to the non E2EE cloud.

Well, there is an SD slot so if you're really concerned about being able to back up your work at all times if you're not network connected, you can periodically copy to that. If your laptop dies, there's no guarantee your SSD drive won't be the cause of the failure and/or can fail based on the same external event--e.g. spilling something.