Oh wait...I think I just remembered the solution to this. We were skipping something...:
1. Back up any old wallet.dat files you may have on the mac to a different directory
2. Close the qt wallet
3. Delete the contents of the ~/.bitcoin/ directory
4. Paste the linux-generated wallet.dat file in the folder
5. Restart the qt wallet & give it time to rebuild the block chain - this may take a while
If all goes according to plan, you'll start seeing your coins coming in as the chain reloads.
Important: This method is only suggested if you have NO coins in the mac-generated wallet to start.
ok great. Ill try this and post the results here.
It worked out nicely bro. Thanks.
I did some more searching for a solution that doesn't involve downloading the entire Blockchain and you can use the following command in terminal to rescan the blockchain and update balances without having to download anything or use bitcoind etc. (change the app name and directory to reflect your Qt client)
cd /Applications/Bitcoin-Qt.app/Contents/MacOS/
./Bitcoin-Qt -rescan