Ah, the iMac that you still can't buy (end of the year is a really strange time to have no inventory of your new flagship desktop)... But that's another rant.

Apple's computers (desktops included, save for the Mac Pro which is essentially EOL) no longer have an optical drive, maybe I should have used that instead. I saw a coworker hunting for his MacBook's ethernet port today, so it was was fresh in my mind.

I honestly can't remember the last time I used an optical drive (and I have one in my MBP). Alternatives are superior in virtually every way.

If you have an always on, reasonably fast and unmetered broadband connection perhaps. I understand it on the laptops, but desktops have plenty of available space so they're removing them simply for the sake of removing them.

I don't use the optical drive on my iMac much, but the times I have had to were not times I would have been able to avoid. I don't want yet another accessory/dongle or one less USB port. There's tons of room, just include the drive.

This came up recently with trying to install Windows inside Parallels on my girlfriend's laptop. Their IT people had a DVD and of course her laptop has no DVD drive, so I looked up how to use Remote Disc and found out that it works great except explicitly not for installing an OS and oddly almost all the other common uses of an optical disc.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5287

These types of discs are not supported by DVD or CD sharing: These types of discs are not supported by DVD or CD sharing: DVD movies, Audio CDs, Copy protected discs such as game discs, Install discs for an operating system such as Microsoft Windows (for use with Boot Camp), or Mac OS X.