I know I saw them both with and without CD-ROM drives back when they were new.

I'm sure most were ordered with, simply because if you're paying that much, you might as well pay a little more for the CD-ROM drive. But likewise, I'm sure there were people who skipped. Either didn't think they need it, or had an external that they just bought so figured they were okay just using that.

I know the one that was bought as soon as it came out for my high school yearbook didn't have a CD-ROM drive.

And the "first CD-ROM" part was specifically referring to the fact that it had a bootable CD-ROM drive, not that it shipped with it. (Sort of like how they say that the PowerBook 500-series was the first to support PCMCIA - it didn't come with the PCMCIA adapter.)