Your problem isn't OS X. It's each application.
Sorry, I may not have been clear and my past biases might have been clouding this part, but I'm not blaming OSX here at all. I have no experience with these limitations on Windows laptops either, so I would fully expect the same problems there, too.
If it lacks an optical drive, it's a Retina Macbook Pro.
Yeah, sorry, I forgot to mention that. Yes, it's a Retina MBP. She got them to get her a pretty damn slick machine here...
And I see ifixit don't actually have any stock of the ones they claim to sell...
No matter, there's no way in heck she'd be able to go that route. This computer doesn't belong to her, it's a work machine that she's just fortunate to be able to use for personal stuff.