I’m looking for a very simple notebook, and at the same time looking for something to run Unity on for my iOS builds.
Is the Macbook Air a good option?
I think if you have the budget, always on the move. I guess Mac air should be good. But i think it’s not really for the serious development. I think.
Depending on your game’s target platform.
If it’s a mobile game or a game without huge levels and tons of polygons then it’s a good choice.
But be warned, 13’ display is not enough for develop game with higher resolution. The unity3.4 supports game view autoresize finally but you may still want to see your game in actual pixels. If you have a second display by hand then there’s no problem whatsoever.
Are you kidding?
My brother has a macbook air and we’re pushing ios to the limit. His macbook air compiles stupidly fast due to the SSD and 4 gig ram. My next mac will be an i7 macbook pro - suggest you consider it as well (quad core is sex appeal!)
My current macbook is a 13" model and it is a bit oppressive in space and WILL prevent you making pixel perfect 2D games if you use 2D collisions of any kind ie rect / 2D coordinates, since it’ll get wildly thrown off by the unity viewport (it won’t fit unless your mac has hd res if doing ipad games)
However the beauty of a macbook air is that you hook it up to a second monitor and you got DUAL display! scripts on one screen, unity on the other, its bliss.
I’m just using it for building iOS.
A better option is probably for me to run a Mac OS on my PC via VMware.
Is it possible to build and publish files to a iOS Phone/Tablet via VMWare?
I had a Macbook Air (2nd gen) for my iOS development and it worked fine, but the screen size stank. Also, near the end, I was at the peak of the memory usage and found myself killing a lot of programs in order to run and compile my Unity projects. I had SSD and about 2 gb RAM. The new Air version is probably fine for development, but the thunderbolt on the latest is a little crippled compared to the Macbook Pro series.
I would recommend running Mac for it’s stability and then using Parallels, etc. for your virtualized environments. Also, you’ll stretch your hardware resources further by going this way. Yes, it is possible to compile and publish in your virtualized environment without any headaches.
Inches don’t matter; just sit closer. The 13" MacBook Air has as many pixels as the standard 15" MacBook Pro. 1440x900 isn’t ideal, but I get a lot of good work done with it. (I get a lot more work done faster when I dock, and use it along with an external 1680x1050. However, even 1680x1050 isn’t enough to see all the pixels of a retina display, in portrait mode.)
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Agreed. I’ve always developed on a laptop, currently on the new 13" Macbook Pro. I’m a one-man shop running Lightwave, Photoshop, Monodevelop, Eclipse, and GarageBand, and I have no problem with space. Just use Spaces to keep your windows uncluttered.
Back on topic, the Air is fine for dev, but I got the Pro because it feels more rugged. Speaking of feel, the Air was not comfortable for me. Something about the shape and weight, I dunno. Just try before you buy.
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Yep, I just ponied up for a new i7 15" model last week…which coincidentally matched my 3.4 upgrade experience…and just…wow. Total bliss as far as the heavy importing and build pipeline operations go, and an instant, unstoppable grin the first time I saw the progress box text: “AOT cross compile on 10 threads”
Man I didn’t realize MBA provides higher resolution than MBP with same inches.
I use a MBP 13’ and 1280x800 is definitely not very comfortable for develop for retina and ipad resolution.
And I definitely want to have a new MBA now!
You can always connect an external monitor and keyboard (etc) to the Air. That’s what I do on my MBP. Performance is fine.
I’m using MBP quad core i7 2.2ghz AMD ATI 6750HD 1gb 15"… love this machine to work with unity.
Previously I was using MBP core2duo 2.4ghz nvidia 9600gt, and was fine too , but the new machine can calculate lightmaps very fast 
The new MBA has only Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU with 256 or 384 shared RAM.
Not bad but not the best option for Unity3D, in my opinion.
http://t-gaap.com/2011/3/9/macbook-graphics-face-off-intel-hd-graphics-3000-vs-nvidia-geforce-320m
My girlfriend got that the day it came out, and we put 8 GB of RAM and an OWC 240 GB SSD in it. Using it makes me cry, given my 3.5 years old machine. It’s a beast.
…Of course, just a few months later, OWC released SSDs with a 6 Gb/sec. interface. 