Can’t you just buy some cheapo external USB drive† and stow it away for disc-related emergencies? For me just knowing that drives like that exist is enough, I know I can order them from Amazon and have them the next day. (Nowadays I only really use my optical drive to rip music I can’t get any other way. That happens maybe once a year or so.)

If you like watching DVDs while you are mobile I would definitely not recommend getting a PC without optical drive anytime soon – for obvious reasons. If you don’t, I really see no reason not to ditch the optical drive. All other use cases seem to be handled well enough by emergency external drives.

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† Like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-External-Optical-SE-S084D-TSBS...

Even if you like watching DVDs on your laptop you'd likely still be better off with a removable optical drive. Rip the discs to the hard drive and run them from there.

Highly recommended. I use this method exclusively, even though I have working DVD drive: scratched discs don't cause nasty surprises during the movie, and the drive doesn't make noise during playback.

With RipIt.app set to auto-rip every inserted DVD and eject it it's no hassle.

After the optical drive on my MBP broke, I came to the same conclusion. I never bothered to get it fixed, and since I have a spare external drive, it was never a problem.

There's always the option of using an external optical drive. With the TB display you could simply plug it into one of the USB ports and have it docked on your desk ready to go. The slim/portable optical drives out there are no huge burden to stash away in your backpack. I think we're past the point where it makes much sense to build the optical drive into a device. To me it feels like carrying around my toaster all day because I might want to have some toast later. (I make toast more often than I use my optical drive actually)

Personally, I like that it doesn't because there are actually better options than Apple is willing to sell. I like the OWC Mercury Pro (blu-ray, dvd, cd). It is a nicer option and can sit on the edge of the desk. On the new display, hooking it up to to the firewire 800 is a good option.

But consider, would you really need one? I thought the same thing when I explored purchasing the new 13" Air, until I realized that the last time I needed to put a DVD in my computer was 2008 and it adds way more everyday weight than it gives everyday use.

Optical drives are gonna be like floppy disks within a few years. Apple probably won't be bothered with it. The next iteration of MacBook Pros is likely to drop optical drives too.

Would you use it regularly, and if so, for what? For the offhand driver installs, you can always use Mac disk sharing.

Not regularly, no, just something I want to have available. Here are some things I still use an optical drive for:

    - ripping CDs of rare or out-of-print music.
    - burning CDs/DVDs of photos for friends who don't have a USB drive.
    - reading old CDs I have, like a CD of BeOS.

But I use it infrequently enough that maybe a peripheral is the way to go.

1) A valid reason. 2) Come on, just buy them a usb stick, it will be much cheaper in the long run and way more convenient. 3) Storage is so cheap and CDs so unreliabe that you are better off just ripping them once and never use them again.

I've been (mostly) happy without my optical drive on my netbook for a while now. It's limited my operating system options, but I haven't really needed it aside from that. Most software I use (even games), does not require a CD anymore. It's just not as necessary. And when it is, you can buy an external cd drive for around $100

That would basically make it an iMac... :D

You can get an external one for the rare cases where it's necessary and you can't work around it.