Hey there,
I’ve never used a mac (except a few minuts here there for web browsing where there was nothing else available) so i’m really clueless in that space.
However with unity making ios/android free i’m thinking of grabing a mac mini for this and have a few questions
What are the min spec for unity + publish to ios? Do i need a minimum os version or a minimum mac mini version or configuration? I’m probably going to get it used if it makes sense but not sure yet (i’m not planning to develop on it at all, i’ll keep deving on the pc so don’t advice something more powerfull that needed, mac is going to be used for copy => paste => launch unity => build to ios => debug only)
I have a kvm setup embeded in my computer so i can switch everything to another computer, i’m planing to use that with the mac mini too, will it work or will a windows keyboard mouse not work? I’d rather not learn the 1 mouse button way.
Anything else i should be wary of or plan ahead of time?
The big time sink when switching from PC to Mac and iOS is re-importing the assets. With a large project, with lots of texture and other assets, your Mac Mini will spend a lot of time importing these assets. If you copy across the entire project each time you want to make a build on the Mac mini, then a faster computer will benefit you here. If you are syncing the data from your PC to your mac iteratively, only moving over files that have changed, then this cost will not be too bad.
I would recommend getting a mac mini at least in the modern form factor, the complete metal case. Going back to the plastic topped mac minis is too far. If you can afford one of the newer mac minis without a disc drive, then that’s probably a good device to go for.
I would recommend using Synergy http://synergy-foss.org/ to share your input between your PC and the Mac. I used this for years for Unity development with a PC and an iMac, and it was fantastic. I could move my mouse off the right of my PC monitor and it would appear on the mac’s monitor as if it was just another PC monitor. The keyboard controls were fully customizable for it, I think by default it sets the “alt” key on the windows keyboard as the command key on the mac.
Be aware that there can be some differences in rendering behavior when Unity is running on iOS and not PC, and other small differences. Some Unity features that run well on other platforms run really poorly on iOS, like the OnGUI system. If everything goes well, everything will go as you expect above, and you’ll have a build running on an iOS device to test pretty quickly.
I only have (and am not planning to change) a single monitor, so i’ll stick with KVM over synergy, if it fails i guess i could use something remote-desktop like at worse?
I understand what you mean about import time but there’s not much conern there, i really won’t use it at all, i will reimport all each time but each time will be “once every blue moon”, i don’t want to use the mac for anything except generating builds so i’m really planning to test / debug everything on windows all project long except for a build here there to test if i broke everything. So my question on OS/system spec is closer to : under what spec will i get a “cannot run X on this OS” or “cannot launch unity with gfx card X” ? I’d really hate to buy a mac mini and end up not being able to use it to publish to ios but i don’t want to overspend on it as it’ll probably be turned on something like 30minuts per week at most.
You need a Mac that’s capable of running the most recent version of OS X, since Apple has a habit of making XCode require the latest version. So no 32-bit Macs. Macs haven’t come with 1-button mice in years, but you can use whatever you have.
So i may be better off getting a new latest but lower end mac even if i don’t need the performance to future proof myself for potential update requirements?
May be a good idea if the price difference isn’t much, would suck to have to dump it get another in 6 month!
Not necessarily, but you’d want to be careful about used machines, since the earliest Intel Mac minis (before 2008/2009) aren’t 64-bit and can’t run 10.8.
Yeah; I don’t know what else could happen hardware-wise for the foreseeable future that would obsolete current machines (it’s not like anyone’s going to 128-bit anytime soon). But they may think of something…
I dont think it has been mentioned but also remember you will need $99/per year so you can get a developers license from Apple
Without that you wont be able to get the certificates etc to publish.
I tend do a lot of my development on a windows laptop and then copy paste onto iMac when I want to test. Its a pain it reimporting assets and probably not the best practice but gets the job done
Aye i knew about the apple yearly cost but TY for mentioning it, i could’ve not known
Btw side question as it’s the wrong forum but, is there such a fee for android too?
I’m on my second mac mini and I upgraded to the low end of a the new models, but it felt slow running unity + svn + xcode. I upgraded the RAM to 8gb and it’s been great! Best $50 I’ve ever spent. +1 for synergy. +1 for dual monitors.
I really can’t stand dual monitors, as i don’t do much work that is “2 tasks at once”, so i usually ended up with 1 monitor unused back when i had 2, i’d rather have less real estate but on a single screen (was diferent when i was doing webdev, as i had 1 screen for code 1 for website).
Unless unity supports scene view on 1 screen game view in another? If so i think it could be worth upgrading to another 27"!
