How is Time Machine Backup different than MacBook Pro just saving things to the cloud? I am not sure I understand why I need to use Time Machine if things are in the cloud. Please help

TimeMachine makes real backups. iCloud is a sync service. This means that if you delete a file a on your Mac, it's deleted everywhere. If you use TimeMachine, you can go back in time and search for a deleted file

Time Machine makes incremental backups of your Mac so that any change made is updated hourly. If your computer needs to be restored, you can do it from Time Machine and have an exact replica of the Mac before disaster.

Saving documents to the cloud only preserves whatever is in the cloud. Programs, settings, data kept elsewhere on your system, music, movies, etc. are not saved.