I challenge you to give Linux Mint a whirl. Unless you require OSX software or someone else is paying for your hardware, you're probably just throwing money at having sexy hardware.
I haven't touched on software, either. Audio software is a mess on Linux. (Ardour, against the combination of Logic and Ableton and Reason? Ever having to configure jackd, versus Core Audio which literally just works? Why spend the time?) Programming software honestly isn't a ton better unless you find "live in Vim" fulfilling and while I used to do that, I'm much more productive in more modern software. Swing apps--i.e., IntelliJ--look like garbage on Linux and there's nothing on Windows or Linux that comes close to Xcode for C++ development.
Perhaps you should reserve your "challenges" for folks who haven't been there, done that.
Not looking to get into a flame war. You obviously have good reasons to stick with OS X, so I wouldn't try to get you to use anything else. Others, especially web developers, would find Mint more suitable than you do.
I do PHP and Python as well as Java/Scala. In IntelliJ. Because it's a more comfortable environment for me. Like I said: I used to do the vim-and-terminal thing. I've gone