If you have a real keyboard you can use the pad of your hand to hit the control key in the bottom left corner, which some people find even easier. This is definitely the easiest way to hit Ctrl-Q.
Wasn't just Apple and Sun, it was almost everyone. The first IBM PC keyboards, the Apple machines, Atari and Amiga, almost all Unix workstations, etc. all had it where caps-locks sits now. I can't remember the exact IBM keyboard where it switched, but the Model M moved it and maybe a bit before that.
Caps-locks is such an infrequently used key to be taking up such valuable real estate.. I've never gotten mentally used to control being banished to the lower left. I remap on every keyboard I get.
The other thing Apple got right and PCs screwed up: the bumps on the home row used to be on ‘d’ and ‘k’. That way, even if your right hand was offset one to the right, you’d still feel the bump and notice it was under the wrong finger, which is much easier than noticing that you don’t feel a bump at all.
I don’t recall whether other vendors got that right.
It also screws up my muscle memory. I hate the way ThinkPads do this too. At least you can remap them there too, but in some cases my work had the bios menu locked down :(
