Well, I know what you mean and I understand your point. However, this debate is getting a bit circular. Frankly, there are no 100% convincing arguments for any side of it. You can come up with an counterargument to anything I say and via versa.
In the end, what matters is the overall trend and/or the will to change it. And Apple had some success with setting trends, as we all know. For optical media, the current time is time of transition, and there is an unmistakable trend for its phasing out. Few years ago, almost all content for computers came with CDs/DVDs; nowadays, the trend is digital distribution. I have no doubt that optical media will continue to exist in the following years, but its role will diminish to media content only (movies/music), basically, it will follow the path of tapes. Apple decided to accelerate this trend by ignoring ODD in their entirety. Some people support that decision, some don't. In the end, we can debate whether its good or not all day long, but the fact is that the ODD is gone from Apple products and its not coming back.
I agree with this much more so than your previous comparison of optical media to tape media. It is in Apple's best interest to move away from optical media as they don't sell any. It's also very difficult to buy a used digital download. The bottom line is that they haven't preventing you from enjoying optical media with an iMac they have just placed a barrier in your way.