Having OS X in our stack allows us to tackle a lot of use cases that come out of the prototypical design process. Format support, color profiles, color space conversion, typography, etc. are all mastered in OS X, but lacking in other operating systems. Apple has had the best imaging scientists in the world working for the last 30 years on getting these features right. We want to be able to leverage that expertise, whenever it makes sense, to produce the highest quality image. In this case, the consequence of that decision means racking Macs.
ImageMagick clearly grew up in environments with short lived processes - the command line, php, etc. Run it in a long lived process at your peril, and watch all your memory leak away. I also don't think it makes very good use of available GPUs at all.
Interesting. I work in VFX and we only use OSX when when we absolutely have to(read prores).
Interestingly I've found the color handling to be "odd". I'd recommend looking at nuke from the foundry.
It's designed to be fast, scriptable, and handle comically large images. One of the nice things is its multi-platform. you'll not need the GUI, but you'll love the color tools.
The math is well known, and many libraries exist. I bet you could replace the OS X and Mac hardware with more cost effective hardware and software with an engineering effort in the low man years, if not less. Which would presumably pay back pretty quickly.
If it's just OS X you need, and not the overpriced Apple hardware, why not just buy a bunch of OS X licenses and install it on your normal servers (a la Hackintosh)?
It would cost much much less and you would be able to have completely uniform server hardware with faster networking.
Just because it's against their ToS doesn't mean that their ToS is enforceable.
If you purchase a legitimate license to OS X and only use it on personally owned hardware that you keep in your possession (unlike that company that tried to sell Hackintoshes a couple years ago), it's very unlikely that Apple could ever have a legal case against you.
Your interpretation of the law is wrong. "Click-wrap" licenses have been held enforceable for over 15 years. See, e.g., ProCD v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996).
