You know, he could have inserted his installation DVD and installed it from there. Also, Ubuntu ships without make, Ruby or Python, too, so I can't really see that Linux is at an advantage there.

After that, both Linux and Mac are Unix systems and have package managers that can install stuff (third party on Mac). Personally, I spend most of my time in Chrome, a terminal and Vim. On OSX. Because I like it that way. But I could certainly replicate that same development process in some Linux distro.

Also, many Linux applications work just fine on OSX but not the other way around. So there is some argument for choosing OSX. Also, all that basic stuff like connecting to networks, having MS Office, etc. just plain works better on OSX. But to each his own.