Intel wants the end of ATA

In its next chipsets, which will come out in a few months, Intel chose to rock the boat and use SATA at the expense of ATA. While hard disks have already been massively migrated to that norm, it's quite another story for other devices such as DVD burner, and manufacturers will probably feel pushed by the move.
For sure, PC mainboard makers still have the option to implement an additional ATA controler, but it is unlikely that Apple will do so, if you take into account recent events such as the leaving hehind of FireWire 800 in the MacBook Pro: as Intel wasn't supporting it, Apple gave up.
In our opinion, this proves that Cuppertino isn't into such inhouse solutions anymore and prefers focusing on other fields.
With luck, the good side of Apple's forced migration to that norm will be the early arrival of the mainly SATA based blue laser drives.