1. They are not going to put a dedicated GPU in the 13" MacBook Pro in lieu of an optical drive. If they remove the optical drive, they'll boast increased thinness. Increased cooling ain't gonna happen either. You don't need to remove the optical drive to have both SSD and a Hard Drive both present (see the MacBook Air's blade SSD implementation) Also, side-note: if you want a dedicated GPU, just get a 15" MacBook Pro; those who need that kind of GPU probably also need that kind of screen real-estate, and I'm sure Apple has all of the marketing data to support that.
2. Even if they removed the optical drive in any of the three MacBook Pro lines, they STILL wouldn't be able to fit today's current quad-core laptop CPUs without making the damn thing thicker. Such probably won't be true of next generation's quad-core laptop CPUs, but by then, they won't need to ditch the optical drive to do it.
3. Just because you don't use the optical drive doesn't mean that there aren't a metric butt-load of people who do. I do, and I'd be screwed without one, both in personal use and in professional use No, I don't want the external super-drive as that is completely and utterly inconvenient. If we can't have our Superdrives, than you shouldn't have your SD cards and FireWire 800 ports, at which point we might as well be using a MacBook Air anyway.
4. Superdrives don't make the laptop THAT much thicker, heavier or unwieldy to carry, and if they do for you, you should just get a MacBook Air.
5. I take apart these machines as a side-job when I'm not doing post-production work. I know how these machines work and I depend on them. Hell, I'll bet I've seen most of these MacBook Pros naked more times over than most of you ever will. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about.