So Apple is now phasing out DVD drives from its machines? Of course, as the article says, this started a few years ago with the Macbook Air. I'm not surprised that Apple is continuing with this, it's the kind of thing they'd do; as the article's speculation says, and I agree, it's quite unlikely Apple will stop there and not move on to removing disc drives from more of their computers. Sure, you can get an external drive, but that's not exactly the best solution compared to internal.
On the other hand, of course, this was quite obviously coming. As if Apple'd stick with physical media, when instead they can push people towards using Apple's web store more, and can get rid of that ugly disk drive in their console too? Hah!
... I think everyone can guess what my opinion of this is. Of course I'm not exactly fond of Apple, but this kind of thing shows exactly why that is. Function matters more than form, darnit, Apple! And despite what Apple fans and the DD-only-future faithful may say, there are lots of reasons to want physical media. You have clearer ownership of something physical; you get more for your money (physical product and packaging too), lots of things aren't available as digital downloads; things can be removed from DD stores and vanish from legal access, because there's no way to buy a used copy of a DD product; bandwidth limits are getting worse, not better; and more...
But Apple cares for form above all and Steve Jobs hates things like buttons and media drives messing up the clean styling of his systems, so disc drives are out.
(And yes, I thought that iMacs dropping floppy drives in 1998 was stupid. Basically anyone wanting to actually use one needed an external drive of some kind (floppy and/or zip, usually), that was before flashdrives after all, and that internal CD drive wasn't a burner...)
