It's not supposed to be perfect. It's just a solution to that problem.
Remember when optical drives where removed from laptops? We had to carry an external optical drive. Some times we'd forget it. It was inconvenient. But we survived.
No, “we” did not carry external optical drives. By the time Apple removed them, downloading music and software was already mainstream. Removing the headphone jack is not the same.
Optical drives take up lots of space, use a lot of electricity, and have moving parts that can break easily in a portable device like a laptop. A computer like the Macbook Air would simply be impossible with an optical drive.
I'm willing to make that trade, especially given how uncommon DVD's were even by the time the MBA launched. (Although I'll note that my desktop has a BluRay drive and I wouldn't have it any other way.)
What benefit am I getting in exchange for the loss of a headphone jack? An extra couple millimeters of screen real estate?
