You may not like it, but mixture is totally correct about this.
Except for renting DVD videos, the optical drive is well on the way to obselescence.
Installing device drivers from a CD/DVD is pointless. My experience is more with Windows than Macs, but with Vista / Win7 / Win8 virtually all drivers for common hardware are available online through plug n pray and windows update. The device manufacturers often have more advanced drivers available for download, but these will always be newer than those "out of the box"
I haven't used a hardware setup disk in years - except on the odd occasion where the customer doesn't have broadband, or on the really rare occasion when I was reinstalling a piece of geriatric kit.
Virtually all software is available for download, while for backup optical drives aren't big enough (as as we all know, no-one does backups anyway)