Your headline is intriguing, but the content of the article is completely wrong. Apple will have an optical disk drive as long as people buy CDs and DVDs. (Completely different from the floppy drive, since no one bought music/movies on floppies.)
But what I *thought* you meant was that the Intel iBooks (not iMacs) will not have a *hard* disk drive... which is quite possible. Why else would Apple be writing a $1.25 billion check for flash RAM? Can't be just for iPods, no matter how popular.
Nope, something Intel-powered, portable, with many gigabytes of flash RAM instead of a hard disk is coming our way. Personally, I hope it's a tablet, but I doubt it.
The Intel iMacs Won't Have A Disk Drive