I was an ardent Linux desktop user for years (Slackware, Gentoo, Ubuntu), and the model of OSX for desktop, Ubuntu VM for dev works well for me. I have this exact set up doing Django based work. I treat my Ubuntu VM as an IDE... suspend when I am not working, resume and I have 4 desktops in the same state they were the last time I worked (desktop for test server processes + celery, and logs, a desktop for editing files in vim, and one running FF on the project(s) I am working on).

OSX's desktop experience is so much simpler and straightforward for a lot of things. I loathe homebrew and XCode, and actively avoid doing anything with those tools under OSX (but I know I can fire up a terminal when I need to). iTunes and sync'ing to my iPhone have become indispensible, Notational Velocity / Simplenote kicks tomboy/gnote, text expander, Adium, etc. There are equivalents on linux, but they always lack some polish... I know people think OSX takes away choice and power (like some kind of toy OS), but I have come to be okay with that for the convenience and consistency it brings to the table.

Give me a vanilla OSX install over a vanilla ubuntu install any day of the week.

Exact same reasons here. I love being able to suspend, resume and clone VM dev environments, and there's plenty of OS X software I really don't want to give up outside of dev work (Keynote, Sparrow, Reeder, Final cut, Pixelmator, etc..)

His issues sound more like issues with open source project governance. Github has just made it easier to contribute, and thus it is becoming clear that good open source projects have good governance. The owner of a project on github is not the only one who can merge pull requests, they can add multiple collaborators on a project...

If anything it does highlight the need for more people to form collectives around projects and use the organisation tools to own the projects...