If you want to search and index it, you don’t want to do that on tapes. It’s doable, but difficult. And what benefits tapes gain in reliability/long term storage, a RAID system would negate. Cheaper large SSDs make these kinds of systems more economical to the average person.
Exactly. Eventually what we see now as cutting edge will become “bare minimum” or even “obsolete” hardware one day. Eventually the camera on your cell phone will by default be taking such high resolution pictures that anything less that a TB of onboard storage will seem quaint.