It still has that cachet with, well a bit older generation. I have an Indy and Indigo2 (purple - max impact one) and when someone visit and sees the machines it's like you sprawled a vintage ferrari in (our) eyes. I don't think there's anything comparable today when we have it all.
I demonstrated IRIX to younger colleagues and it was - ok, so it's alright I guess, like anything else we have today? Yep.. but contemporary world was NOT like that.
I had an Octane as well, heavy and loud beast. All in storage now waiting for move. In late 90s I worked a lot on SGI machines (vfx).