Windows or Mac? What’s better to work with Unity?
*Windows or Mac.
I hate it that everyone uses PC when they mean Windows.
Neither is better, this will lead to flamewars. I say lock thread.
PC Of course… Mac isn’t even close to as many features as pc. PC Has more freedom, you can basically download anything.
He’s asking which machine has better performance for Unity’s editor, not the amount of torrents you have access to.
I use Unity with both almost daily and the only performance issues I see are associated with the differences between my Macbook and my PC laptop.
If I had to choose, I’d prefer the Mac w/a 3-button mouse.
For the time being, clearly Mac
Not cause Macs really are better (cause as long as they build ATI into their boxes they never will be, thats a fact that Apple can hate till their boxes become black instead of white from age) but until UT finally gets a 64bit editor - beast - umbra done, OSX has the clear edge due to its memory management that gives any application by default 4GB of ram at least, independent on if its 32bit or 64bit. Or put differently: you need to do much worse things to kill umbra and beast on osx than you need to do on windows.
On windows they will run on 32bit or mix cause unity does not compile all applications with the large memory aware flag that would give 32bit apps 4GB of RAM on a 64bit OS
Also osx is the only OS you can target all regular platforms unity supports with ie Win - OSX - Web - iOS - Android. Windows can not target iOS
@Neverbe I would use what you feel more comfortable with.
Also Beast on OS X is already 64 bit.
–Eric
Technically Unity still is a little better and more stable on Mac, and OSX is necessary to export projects to iOS. But if you prefer a much more powerful machine for your money, and with many more development tools available, no discussion: Windows.
Also I think Macs are not reliable machines, my MacBook Pro, (despite I was very careful) broke down with only two years of use and it could not be repaired because the cost was almost 1100 euros.(Motherboard died).
A single instance isn’t meaningful; broadly speaking Macs are the most reliable (see this chart from PC World last year). Keeping in mind that all brands have defects and breakdowns, some have fewer than others.
–Eric
Pepsi or Coca Cola?
Everyone is just a machine you do your work with. For me personally I was a Mac user for 2 years and found out that repairing my iMac would cost as much as 2/3 of a new model - after that I switched back to Windows. Also I’m back on Win7 now, because there are a little more “support software” tools. Free software like xNormal or a working NVidia Plugin for Photoshop normalmaps. I’m still using a MacBook Pro as mobile plattform.
Macs are easier, more fun to use (for me personally) but too expensive. Reliability - I can’t confirm that entirely, sorry. My iMac burned out after 15 months - faulty NVidia card. My MacBook Pro started to creak when closing after 13 months. The system crashed on me about as often as Windows did. The thing I can assure is: MacOS is waaaay more fun to use and way more intuitive. For everything windows there’s still bootcamp or virtual machines. If I really had no need to look for the invested money I’d probably be using a MacPro. Since I still do have to keep my budget in mind I’m using a Windows PC. I don’t feel any single one is really superior to the other. Every one has their strengts and weaknesses.
Just my 2 cents
“A single instance isn’t meaningful; broadly speaking Macs are the most reliable (see this chart from PC World last year)”
Maybe I am the exception to the rule because I have (amongst others) a five years old Dell laptop with plenty of dust and it works perfectly from the first day…
Everyone saying that has just never used a Mac. You’re not limited to the app store, it’s just there. If you don’t want to use it, you can delete it (no idea what that will do, though).
I’ve used Unity on both and I can’t say performance on either is better than the other. If you want to use Mac OS-X, go ahead. If you want to use Windows, go ahead.
However, if you buy a Mac, you should know that you can build a PC that’s much more powerful for a fraction of the price. I wouldn’t go for another pre-built PC brand because they’re generally terrible and break easily, but Apple is premium quality and it works.
My advice would be: build a PC.
if i just focus on unity i’d go with a mac.
i run it on both windows and mac and on the mac it just runs while in windows you can have troubles with antivirus and all that silly things that slow down development.
other than unity: pick what you like
They both work on both Windows and Mac, right? So It doesn’t matter!
i used Unity for both (on the same machine)… its the same thing. This is performance wise and anything else. Now, the supporting tools like IDEs and stuff are a different story. The PC wins this hands down.
Thats a personal thing though, not an OS things.
My MBPs have crashed more regularly per year (this is MBP 2008 spring and MBP 2011 spring) than my windows machines (desktop + server) the past 6 years together. I naturally maintain them myself and built them myself, but none the less its not windows thats instable its the fact that people that shouldn’t be allowed to push the power button are even allowed to use them and normally do so on Windows which is causing the rumor that windows XP SP3+ is still as instable as the Win98 / Me breed 
But with Beast already being 64bit you basically listed another strong reason going with osx for now on top of the umbra can use 4gb
As for hands down winning on support tools etc: Yes if you like me use C#, then VS + Resharper is unreplaceable. But aside of that, I have no tool thats not either cross platform or replaceable beside Photon and Photon runs on my homeserver so what do I care
If Unity is better on Mac then Unity is bad. Windows is the superior system for gaming.
Right for gaming. But unity is no game, its an engine, as such it matters that it can output to windows, not that it is better on windows or anything.
Unity for a long time was a OSX only technology don’t forget that. With U3 its a bit skewed, there are things that are more troublesome with it on Windows (beast - umbra) and others that are more troublesome on osx (anything related to async and threading tends to go much more wrong on osx than windows)
Yes, gaming, but not game development.
well, 1 thing i noticed about windows that you can not do easily with a mac
say your on an extremely large project with a team with lots of assets, and export out scenes as packages for the team to update assets
if your copy over your new folder containing the updated assets on mac it will erase your whole file and paste in the new ones, so if every single last image isnt replaced, you will lose them and mess your whole project up
windows allows you to only overwrite existing files, simply replacing the assets, and will not wipe out your entire assets folder