Sure it's better than nothing but it's not a good backup plan. The reasoning was that Apple is holding back OTA updates because this one niche thing isn't covered perfectly (although Carbonite and others do a good job of hands-off online backup). I'm saying that if you're protecting something which isn't very good in the first place, and holding back a lot of good features because of it, that's a bad reason to do so.
It's much better than no backup. An offsite backup offers only little additional security. (Not that it's not worth it. But the difference between no backup and backup is vast, the difference between backup and offsite backup is small. It's like the difference between a $50 dinner and a $100 dinner — noticable but rather irrelevant compared to a combo meal from McDonald's.)
