Hi Jpar, welcome to SM Max is windows only, unless you're going to run bootcamp and I don't know how well that will work out. The thing with Maya is that it is very customizable and extendable. Most of the realistic Max renders floating around are done in Vray, and it's designed to relieve the user from a lot of the manual setup, for example handling gamma (which is vital to realistic images). MR for Maya is very capable as well, it's just brunt of the setup is on the user, which allows for more control,this can be a good thing or an inconvenience depending how you look at it.

Your scene looks really good but I think the lights are the culprits. Lights with quadratic decay behave more like real world lights, but require high light intensities and without an exposure lens shader on your camera, you'll get such horribly blown out areas it'll make you sick. Look into "linear workflow in Maya". Be warned, it may piss you off. But it's not all bad news, scripts make it easier, so if you a buddy or the internet can conjure them up, it should be ok.