While thats fine for people that have no need for them but I rip my CD's to lossless and having to buy a USB optical drive is just more things to clutter the desk and IMO they retired it to early and some would have wanted a BD drive but that will never happen.
Now if they offered lossless selections in iTunes I might never miss my optical drive.
Whoops, I meant a USB thumb drive. 64GB can be had for $25-30. I can plug that into my car/home stereo/TV/other computers/etc. Same goes for movie rips. Easily downloaded, transferred to thumb drive, then plugged into the TV.