I know the Mini and Air can access media from another computers optical drive (if allowed), so it may still want to play DVDs using that method. Also, if you have a ripped dvd in the form of something like .dvdmedia then DVD Player will allow you to play that out of the box...

Apple also sell a USB DVD drive for the driverless machines.

I am expecting the next generation of MacBooks and MacBook Pros not to come with an optical drive at all.

First no floppy and now no optical. TBH I thought this would happen but thought it'd be a while yet. We'd have stacks of CDs and DVDs the way our parents had vinyls and VHS cassettes.

I have lots of DVDs. Nowhere near thousands but definitely over a hundred. I still watch them on my PS3 or laptop - mainly because I haven't gotten round to ripping them all.

I certainly recall most computers coming with some basic form of PowerDVD to play DVDs and TBH I found they were better than WMP - mainly in going back/forth within a DVD. Certainly I won't miss this so long as there's an alternative.

You can still buy USB devices for transferring Vinyl and Compact Cassette to mp3. You can buy USB VHS drives for ripping old tapes to mp4. You will be able to buy external drives and software for ripping DVDs long after they stop selling films on them.

Both CD Audio and DVD Video were horrible compromises when they were released, providing a quality that was as good as the technology of the time could deliver. It's only because most people really don't care about true fidelity that they still exist at all. DVD Audio should have replaced CDs many years ago, but it didn't because most people don't care about quality...

I think that's only half the story - most people don't use speakers good enough to warrant the extra spend. CD quality is 'good enough' for 90% of the public.

Quite a lot of people have pretty good head phones though, and I'm not sure more music isn't consumed through cans than speakers these days! Just a shame mp3s are still mostly being mixed and sold at such low quality for no good reason...