[Zak]

I actually found the removal of the floppy drive to be rather premature. It took several years for any of the currently popular alternatives to reach critical mass for most people. It wasn't reasonable to assume, for example that Internet access would be available on a computer you wanted to bring a file to. USB flash drives weren't available (or at least cheap and common), and it was more likely than not that a destination computer wouldn't be able to read one.

I knew a lot of people with Macs in the late '90s, and most of them bought USB floppy drives.

[mikeash]

If they hadn't kickstarted the process, how long would it have taken for the removal not to be premature? Often these things have to be done before their time in order for their time to come at all.