Really? This shocks me. Over the summer I bought my parents a Dell tower which includes not only an optical drive but bays for other drives. As is often the case, I don't know what the chiefs at Apple are thinking. The Dell runs quite well, Windows 8.1 is so far a pretty good OS, though of course it still has many Windows drawbacks. I don't know why Apple continues to marginalize itself in the name of innovation.
I thought the same thing. I made sure, when I got my laptop, that it came with an optical drive...
...and then I realized I hadn't touched it at all, so I took it out, put it in an external enclosure, and put a second hard drive in the space where it used to be.
I asked my sister, who knows something about phtography, about digital cameras. She says they still don't compare to film.
That was true for a long time--in the high end, it was true up 'til about ten years ago (there were digital large-format cameras on the market back then that could surpass film in both resolution and dynamic range, but they cost upward of $180,000) and until just a couple of years ago in 35mm.
Modern high-end DSLRs--the kind you spend $2500 on, not the kind you spend $500 on--exceed film in resolution (by a healthy margin) and approach film's dynamic range. A Canon EOS-1D X will not only give you better sensitivity than the best film on the market, there's no contest--it's not even close. There's no perceptible noise even when you're shooting at ISO 1600. Tests show you'll see 11 stops of dynamic range at ISO 100, falling to 9 stops at ISO 12,800. By way of comparison, 35mm film is noisier and less sensitive, but offers moderately wider dynamic range; good 35mm film will give you about 14 stops of dynamic range[1], at a cost of lower sensitivity.
Low-light sensitivity in particular is where digital really shines. High-end DSLRs from Canon and Nikon can produce images you literally can't get on film, like
this famous National Geographic image by photographer Iwan Bann, showing the blackout in New York City after Hurricane Sandy. Bann shot it with a Canon EOS 1D, and says that no film camera could cope with the combination of low light, motion, and high shutter speed necessary to get the shot.
[1] The wide dynamic range of 35mm film generally assumes exposing for shadows and clipping hilights, because negative film is more tolerant of overexposure than underexposure. You're getting a wide range by sacrificing detail in bright areas--so in that sense it overstates the case. If you measure the dynamic range of film without clipping, by exposing for hilights rather than shadows, you'll usually see more like 7-8 stops of dynamic range.
