I am currently deciding wether I should buy a mac for game development for the following reasons, its really light so its portable, and I can publish for mac and iOS along with the other platforms currently available. I am currently using a eurocom gaming laptop for game development and gaming but its heavy and takes time to pack up as I got to put away my keyboard and mouse unplug everything I also use it for gaming a lot. So in the end what do you guys think? Mac Laptop or PC?
POLL: http://strawpoll.me/5619501/
It doesn’t really matter. The biggest issue is whether you want to pay the apple tax or not. If you actually want more powerful hardware cheaper, then go PC.
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Ya thats another thing I am fighting with in my head, the only reasons I want a mac laptop is because I can build for more platforms but iOS costs $100 a year which is crazy and its an extremely portable device. I am still going to think about it and see.
PC All the way here.
Heck got an 8 core AMD 5.0 GHZ
8 gigs ram / Really bought 16 but wasn’t paying attention and bought one wrong ram lol.
Radeon R9 290 Gfx Card.
Case
Mobo (Motherboard)
for like 700 bucks.
(Before shipping).
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Wow that sounds like a really good pc, where did you get it from?
I love it lol.
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For the sake of testing, it is ideal to have all of the various platforms. That’s what I maintain at my place. For the more budget-minded developer, going the Mac route can actually be quite reasonable, mainly for the reasons you already stated. Building for iOS absolutely requires access to a Mac. No real way around that, and I’ve never trusted the Hackintosh option.
This is actually not as true as it once was. While you do still have to pay $100 a year to deploy software on the Apple Store, it is no longer required to sign up for the annual subscription to perform testing on iOS devices. Nor do you have to pay the $100 a year while you are initially developing your game. And all of the development tools are also available free of cost, so no worries there. You mainly just have to sign up for the $100 a year subscription when you are ready to launch your game on the Apple Store. It’s still a slight barrier, but not as much of one as it used to be.
Personally, I went with the option of doing most of my development on PC, and picking up a Mac Mini for Mac testing and deployment. I’m mainly focused on less graphically intensive development, so the Mac Mini has been just fine.
It helps considerably if you know some people who have the other PC platforms available. It’s usually not that hard to convince a few friends to help you with testing on other hardware platforms.
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The mac with windows 10 on bootcamp can service all known deployment platforms, while windows cannot.
In my case I preferred a grunty desktop (which is already starting to have problems with usb ports). I need a strong bang for buck windows desktop though.
However if anyone asks me what I want for laptops, then apple wins and nobody changes my mind 
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You can buy Windows laptops that are equally as light as Apple’s laptops (TechRadar’s Top 10 link below). Ask yourself though if you can stand working on a tiny laptop because many lightweight laptops are focused around a 13.3-inch screen or smaller and similarly sized keyboard. It may not be comfortable for you compared to a bigger and heavier laptop.
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Alright thanks 
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Ya I was thinking of doing most of my development on the mac but I could build a really amazing gaming pc for the same price so i’m not sure yet.
Still don’t know yet this is a hard choice to make lol (Really Good Gaming PC or Mac Laptop)
Ya I probably wouldn’t be able to work on a tiny laptop, I still don’t know if i’d rather get a laptop or a desktop.
Or better yet use PC Part Picker to configure your system, check for any conflicts in the selections, and point you to the online stores with the best prices per component.
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If you must have a ultra portable and pay for the extra portability then definitely wait for the MacBook Air portables with SkyLake innards and use bootcamp. Since I won’t again overpay for a quickly obsoletely portable I’ll waiting for the Mac Mini Skylake.
You don’t have to pay the $100 a year to Apple until you have a good game at the ready that you’ve developed on Windows for Android and Windows 10 Universal platforms so you’ll spend most of your time booted into Windows 10 but that’s not a big deal. Unity is mostly the same, Blender is, Gimp is, and Windows offers you more and more inexpensive SW options.
You’ll want 8GB or 16GB RAM and 32GB or 64GB if doing lightmap baking. You’ll also need 1TB or more SSD drive though. 256GB os X, 256GB Windows, 500GB Shared Documents and if you’re a nerd you can squeeze in a Linux os partition. 2 TB SSD is more reasonable with the cumulative space these art assets and Unity asset store packages take but now you are starting to talk about a $3000 Apple computer that can’t be reconfigured on quickly obsoleted CPU/GPU core.
Apple needs to start manufacturing so that SSDs and RAM are easily upgradable from other sources then themselves as they have unreasonable expectations. Who wants to trash the expense of SSDs and RAM in a high end Apple device because the CPU/GPU is old?
@Ryiah - I started using that, but started running into conflicts about the Graphics card fitting into cases, so I did it all on New Egg. I can’t stand ordering parts from different places, I like to get it all at one time lol. Dude my card is like a foot long. haha.
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No, you’ll still overpay since this is Apple we’re talking about. 
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Well I justify it by telling myself that I’m buying a Mac Mini AND a PC at $350 each. I do hope they sort out the SSD, RAM upgrade problem and maybe even see fit to include an empty slot for an NVidia or ATI graphics card.
I cannot imagine this will ever be corrected. The Mac Mini and iMac lines are basically laptop hardware in a less portable form factor. The only offering they have that is like a traditional desktop computer is the Mac Pro. Unfortunately the price on that thing is flat-out ridiculous. You might be able to pick up an older model though with reasonable upgrade-ability.
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Well we know it’s technically doable and not even difficult. Had my 2007 Mac Mini with Core 2 Duo had a slot to add a video card it could still could of done Unity 5 easily, especially with a RAM and SSD upgrade. Although at 10 years old the CPU was really starting to struggle with the JS heavy web pages.
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