I just came here to say, MAC!
I’ve been thinking about switching to PC so I can use Visual Studio, because Monodevelop is so unstable. If I were just starting out knowing what I know now, I would definitely go PC, despite how much I like everything else about OSX. Monodevelop is the bane of my existence.
I got curious and searched a bit, turns out you can use BBEdit with unity! Just need to download the language module package!
http://pong.li/users/rischko/weblog/9e76b/Unity3D__BBEdit.html
Let me know how that goes… I may give it a shot. I’m particularly interested in whether it can be set up to show the offending line of code when you doubleclick a console error.
i may get a mac later this year since i been pc forever lol… gota redo this one having a x124 error thats hardware and my system is 4 years old so hard to find parts, plus that error doesnt say exactly what hardware is failing. but i do have a bootcamp question for mac users.
when you have say win7 on with mac, do you have to restart osx to get into 7 or can you run some form of virtual machine so i can use like russ said a windows scripting tool instead? and since its programing in c# is there any diffrences in the scripting if i do script on pc, then put into mac unity?
I run on both Mac and PC, but prefer Unity on PC because my entire workflow is on that machine.
On PC you have the option of using VisualStudio. I try to use Mono where possible and it has improved recently, but keep finding the autocomplete doesn’t always work. At least not anywhere as good as Visualstudio anyhow.
Regarding stability I’ve had one or two crashes but then I’m using it on Windows 95% of the time and 5% on Mac so you would expect a corresponding increase in failures. In terms of workflow I’ve had xcode on the Mac fail more times than Unity on Windows, forcing repeated builds when doing iOS.
For mobile it’s obviously better to be on Mac because of compiling to iOS. However, you can happily compile to Android on the Windows machine which will allow you to sort out plenty of mobile-specific issues and then when you do iOS it should be little more than copying across to Mac to do the iOS build.
Didn’t see if anyone mentioned it, but Unity was originally a Mac-only product, and Windows support was added in v2.5 I think. Maybe some kinks are still getting worked out on the Windows side?
I use the Monodevelop debugger all the time and would have a hard time living without MD. If auto-complete stops working, I just quit the app and re-launch it by double clicking a C# file in Unity. Also in Unity Pro you can attach the MD debugger to your app running in a player. Which is awesome.
I was using a Macbook Air but found as my project grew, it really wasn’t fast enough for me using Unity and Monodevelop. MD was slow, and compiling scripts in the Unity editor could lag, and iOS builds were sluggish. Now got a Mac Pro 2.8Gz Xeon / 8GB / SSD / Radeon 5770 and both Monodevelop and Unity fliiies 
i own a mac and a pc, i like the pc more, it never really crashed on me, but they are both identical, accept for ios dev.
I think if you get VMware, you can run your windows partition as a vm. I’m not 100% sure though.
You can but I haven’t tried it (don’t have a native Windows partition). And I’m quite happy with using Visual Studio on the Mac, running in VMWare Fusion (on Windows XP 
). You lose a little bit of comfort (double clicking files / error messages) but it’s good enough IMHO. I avoid MonoDevelop as much as I can, and I’m always surprised when people complain about Unity crashing - but usually, it’s people using Unity on Windows
I moved from using Windows only to using Mac primarily and Windows for stuff where Windows is best (Visual Studio and Microsoft Office … and that’s it ). That was when Unity was still only available for Mac … but I never regretted the change (even though it took a little while to get used to the Mac in the beginning)
If you’re using a Mac and want to use Visual Studio with Unity, check out: Setting up Visual Studio for Unity on Mac
But dont forget theres proboly alot more people using unity free on windows then mac
I work on windows and the only crashes i have had is when i started an infinite loop. I love visual studio and use my pc for other frameworks like xna
Ok for the few mac users out there, i need to keep the price down as it will most likely be a Unity Only Machine, so what kinda stats am i looking at hardware wise to run unity stable? ive always wanted to get a mac, and i think this is a reason to get it… currently my pc runs on my 47 inch hdtv, so i would like that optoin to with the mac (hdmi prefered). all current input is very helpful thanks.
@coffinsnail you said “run unity stable”… but Unity will run just as stably on an old Mac Mini as it will a top of the line Mac Pro tower. It really boils down to performance. You should be able to get an HDMI adapter for whatever digital video out is on the Mac you end up with. Hope that helps.
Unity runs fine on my 5-year-old iMac. Any recent Mac should work for you.
A Mac Mini will probably be best for you. They are the cheapest Mac line and have an HDMI out (I’m not sure how many generations they have done that for, so check if you are getting a second-hand machine).
I have a 6 year old iMac, it runs Unity alright, all I really need it for is compilation since I do all my work on my PC desktop. However the latest version of XCode won’t run on the 32-bit Core-duo processors 
The only issue with getting a mac mini: After long enough you may find yourself loving the OS and regrent not spending more money on your first Mac 
Indeed, I regret not spending more money on my Mac! I got the Macbook Air - replacing an older iMac. Now the Macbook Air is perfectly adequate for Unity, provided you’re not developing for iOS. In which case you’re subject to the painful Xcode compiling ritual. Though I doubt even the fastest Macs eliminate that problem, only ease the pain somewhat.
I had intended to do all my Unity work on the Mac but in the end couldn’t get on with the OS (have been trying since my older iMac). The good news was that whilst the Mac was faffing about with iOS compiling I could be doing further tinkering in Unity on the Windows machine. Plus all my software licenses are mainly for Windows and it would be expensive to have to shift over to Mac now… (why doesn’t Adobe let somebody that spent a couple of thousand on Master Collection not have both Windows AND Mac executables?!). Less of a problem switching if you’re into warez though, I guess.
well i have seen some macs for sale on craigslist, ive seen some g4s and such and have been entertaining spending around 1000 on something. have concidered a laptop of some form if they are powerful enough to run unity and compile on. im curious tho if i build something on mac and want to port it to pc, can i just copy all my files over to my pc unity and tinker with some of the c# coding? or is it more complicated then that?
First: stay away from G4 macs. Those are more than obsolete. Those are paperweights.
As for PC: you can even build the PC game from the mac. I have a mac and a PC side by side, I keep all my project files and builds in a Dropbox directory. I do everything in the mac, even the builds, and then playtest the PC build in the windows machine. There is little chance that anything will not work, but just in case (although I never released Bomber Cat for Windows since I have not found a viable way to sell it, steam didnt care for it.)