[Mallrat]

I dont' understand why the 15 inch doesnt' come with a superdrive? I mean at least the option to order it wiht you on apple's website.

do you think if you call apple they would do it.

I prefer the 15 inch to the 17 inch size.

[Eriamjh]

Believe it or not, reducing the number of options of a computer saves Apple money.

So buy a retail superdrive and drop it in then sell the original drive. (You may have to buy iLife to get iDVD though).

[PCTek]

It's incentive to upgrade to the 17".

If the G4 came in the iBook, would you buy a PowerBook? If the iMac were expandable, would you buy a tower?

[Commodus]

It's definitely cost. Last year, Apple had a problem with iMacs overaccumulating in the warehouses, partly because they had too many models. They filtered it down at the start of this year to the two models that people tended to buy: the mid-range 15" Combo model, and the 17" Superdrive model.

Apparently that's been working well enough for them that they wanted to keep it going for the next several months.

[andreas_g4]

Because they want you to buy the 17" iMac if you want a superdrive.