When you begin dragging a mounted disk in OS X now, the trash can image on the dock turns into an eject image, although I'm pretty sure that it hasn't always done that.
That said, I agree. I think the Apple designers could come up with a cool way to include an eject button.
Side note, no Mac (as far as I know) has ever had an eject button. Even the original floppy drives were electronic eject (which was really awesome back in the 80's.)
I guess I was referring to a physical eject button (i.e. the kind you would find on a PC). The button on the keyboard just triggers the same call that dropping the CD into the trash does.
The gray oval in the center of the drive door cover is the load of a class 3 lever that pushes the eject button on a relatively commodity optical drive. It was eliminated once the Quicksilver generation came out.
Those early G4s could also be purchased with a ZIP drive, the coverplate to which infuriatingly had a thin section of plastic covering the ZIP eject button, such that you could see the LED in it but not push it. Now that's just mean.
That said, I agree. I think the Apple designers could come up with a cool way to include an eject button.
Side note, no Mac (as far as I know) has ever had an eject button. Even the original floppy drives were electronic eject (which was really awesome back in the 80's.)