As far as things go this is really a negative. Sun was doing all the right moves (slowly). Interesting hardware - coolthreads, open-sourcing software left and right. IBM has... Linux on mainframes and consulting.
Both Sun and SGI slowly lost out as Apple become the new Unix desktop of choice.
Sun might have been doing some interesting things, but they've pretty much had a decade of investing into technologies they don't have a way to monetize, both in software and hardware. I'm just glad that it's IBM buying them since I think of the potential acquirers, that IBM would be the closest fit to keep some of their character intact.
I think part of my bias in how I see things was I really only caught the tail end of Sun's heyday in the early days of web serving when a lot was being served up by Sun machines running Netscape's web server. In universities there was also a shift from Solaris to Linux, but by the time I was away from working student jobs (did admin and web app devel for the college starting in '97) those spaces were Linux dominated.
To monetize, you need a combination of strategic vision and marketing. "Strategic vision and marketing" is basically Apple! (Also IBM, but in it's more conventional, stodgy way.)
And no. Macs are not the new Unix desktop of choice. The portion of Mac users that are aware of its Unix heart is pretty meaningless. Most Mac users buy Mac because it's pretty and just about every other Mac user buys them because they work well.