Well, I'll bet when it comes to polygonal modeling, Max has more features than you think it does, but simply haven't discovered yet.  What features in Modo were they referring to, that Max doesn't have?  I'll bet whatever the issue is, there's a free Maxscript for Max to compensate the shortcoming; if it's not a case of just not knowing it was possible all along.  Max is so incredibly deep, even highly experienced users don't know all it's possible features.

As for modeling history, if you model procedurally in Max, through adding edit poly modifiers to make changes, rather than collapsing the stack, and working at editable poly, you will have a more versitile modeling history than Modo could possibly provide.  If you look at the Design Reform vids, they do a lot of procedural modeling using the modifier stack, but I'll post a quick tip example of how to use edit poly modifier to make holes in the mesh, for example, that you can later adjust the width of, even after you've added other changes to it, simply by making the holes on an edit poly modifier, in animation mode, then doing the inset command, and deleting the polygons on that edit poly modifier.  Basically, Bandolin, the modifier stack can be used exactly like layers in Photoshop, but for modeling changes.  In a much deeper capacity than Modo's modeling history.

There's also a thread on Polycount forums, which compares Maya to Max for polygonal modeling, and the consensus there was Max was just a better solution, but it could depend also on what you're used to using.

However, there's no appliction out there that can model less destructively than Max, if you model in LAYERS using edit poly and other modifiers in your stack.  Procedurally.  Only collapse the stack at the very end, or when you're completely sure you're not going to need to modify any of your changes up to that point.

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