The article is full of comments and opinions that will be out of date extremely soon.
Apple subsidised the CD-ROM optical drive market before PC users knew of their existence and discontinued them just as PC users expected them as standard. Thunderbolt 5 is another forward-thinking but transitory spec.
The Mac Studio has always been a hideous monstrosity and the kindest thing would be to end it. The new Mac mini, finally relieved in terms of historic size requirements to accommodate an optical drive is the way to go. The Mac Studio was half marketing and half a cover-up over the lack of a new Mac Pro. Apple have made plenty of missteps with Mac over the last five or so years. They make their money from iPhone and 'services' now and appear to have betrayed their core DNA.
