[gonzo]

From the article:

"OS X

Apple‘s operating system offers numerous advantages over other platforms when it comes to image processing, and it is also favored by many designers for the same reasons. imgix has written tools which allow us to leverage these strengths with our service, using OS X for image operations where it provides superior quality and performance.

Deploying this type of hardware in a datacenter environment is a bit of a challenge, and one that we worked on extensively with our systems integrator. Our custom cabinet design allows us to operate these servers the same as any other in our production environment, and ensures they are a reliable component of the imgix infrastructure."

[izacus]

You just copy-pased marketing spew. I think the author of original post wanted to know more about exact technologies/image processing at which OS X excels so much that it's worth deploying Mac Minis in such numbers.

I did enough work professionally with image/video/CV processing that I have a rough idea, but I'd still like to hear some non-marketing speak about why the company decided to invest in the huge hassle that is having rack-mounted Apple gear which misses all redundancy, connectivity and management equipment of standard rackmount servers.

[skuhn]

We debated whether or not this Exposure article was the right place to dive into specifics about our infrastructure and the choices we made (including our decision to use OS X), but ultimately decided that it wasn't a good fit. Exposure is more about showing than telling, with some light descriptive text for context.

imgix's founder and CEO (zacman85) replied in another comment with a few more details about why we use OS X for some things, but there's a lot more detail we could go into. We're thinking about exploring these kind of topics in more depth in future articles, and I hope you'll check them out.

[pan69]

I would say that's a vague description at best. "Numerous advantages" and "favored by many designers".