I know that the OG MacBooks and MacBooks Pro shipped with them. I had a first gen white MacBook and it came with the white plastic remote. I had an app called iAlarm that let you use the remote to put your Mac to sleep. It would chirp like a car locking, and if the Sudden Motion Sensor was triggered it would snap a picture with the webcam. It was useful in school since although everyone had a laptop, they kept trying to bogart mine (I had the only Mac in my group for a while).
By the time to switched to unibody they were no longer including the remote, but the IR sensor stuck around for a while. I just picked up a 2012 Mac mini and it has the IR sensor (and I _think_ the 2014 did as well).