Let me preface this by saying i have never owned a Mac and know very little about them…
I am thinking of selling my PC and moving over to a Mac, this is purely as a platform to have a dabble at iPhone dev.
I have approx 1000euro to spend. Having looked at the Apple site, the main options in my price bracket are: Macbook 4gb ram, 250gb HDD, 2.13 Dual Core OR iMac 20inch with 320HDD and 2.66 Dual Core. Both options come with nVidia 9400M graphics. So they have similar specs. I think i’ll plug for iMac as i like a desktop and don’t normal ‘work on the move’.
My current PC is a 3.00ghz Dual Core with 8800GT gfx. I realise I wont get similar performance, but will the above options be good dev platforms for Unity?
My main worry is the 9400M graphics… how does this perform?
I don’t want to spend 1000euro and have a tired old dog. Keeping the PC is not an option if i move to Mac… the wife has made that perfectly clear! :roll:
Any advice or other options would be greatly received. Maybe if someone has one of the above machines i could send them a build of a project i’m working on to check the performance for me or am i worrying too much!
Cheers,
Matt.
P.S. If this is the incorrect board to post this on, please feel free to move it accordingly.
For the iPhone any Intel based Mac that has OSX 10.5 or higher will do. The only thing you want to stay away from are the Mac Minis with integrated GMA 950 GFX chips.
You might be able to get a great deal on eBay for a used Mac in which case you could keep your PC and pick up a Mac with minimal specs for iPhone dev. You’d save a lot of money this way.
I’m going to be buying a Mini soon and the graphics issue was worrying me, too. One of the salespeople at the Apple store had Flatout 2 installed on a MacBook(same 9400) and it ran really well. I didn’t see a breakdown of exactly what settings were in use, but it looked great and the framerate was smooth the whole time. I think you should be fine as far as general gaming goes.
I have an iMac I bought around Nov 2007, and it works great! As for graphics, I don’t know what your trying to do, but I haven’t had any problems with Unity, modeling (cheetah 3d 3d coat in my case), etc… Gaming (C&C (Mac), and in Windows (dual boot) I’ve run CoD4 no issues). I’m guessing the latest hardware would run better than that!
My wife runs a MacBook Pro (15 inch) from Dec 2007, again… never found any problems with performance.
main prob is that each of the devices you own is over 500€ more expensive then he wants to spend
At 1000€ you only get the entry level macbook / mbp with a bit of luck and the mini
To be honest, i’m still not sure what to do. I just wish the iMac’s (in my price range) didn’t have integrated graphics…
Does anyone have a iMac with a similar spec (2.66 dual core and 9400M gfx) i could send a build of my project to? (it would be good to hear how it runs).
You shouldn’t need a robust mac for porting a game to iPhone. Keep that in mind. I’d get a low end machine that meets your minimum specs (in fact I did this) required for what you want to do, and keep the PC for most of the development.
I don’t know if it is true for your area, but over here in the US there are many second hand options for picking up a cheap Mac. Given your budget I think that you should pursue this.
Save up until you can afford the 24" iMac. Trust me. The bigger screen alone is well worth the wait… plus you’ll get a discrete GPU that actually performs better than the 8800GT you’re on now.
Unlikely.
The only macs that have desktop GPUs and not mobiles are the Mac Pros actually. The iMac have 9600M GT which is desktop comparable to a 9500GT which does not stand any chance against 8800 GT
None the less, the 9600M GT is significantly faster in calculation occlussion culling than the 9400M GT should you have a game that benefits from it
But I fully agree on the screensize, also the cpu, ram and harddisk gains are of good use commonly in multitasking
Noise. Thanks at least for helping us identify you as a fanatic. I think this forum should have a button that allows us to identify folks like this as a source of noise, and thereby allow us to automate filtering them out.
Anyway, as far as what computer to get, the iMac with the big screen is a good purchase. However unless you are comfortable with taking your computers apart you can’t upgrade it, and of course they don’t accept additional cards. So they are essentially really powerful laptops with large screens but without the mobility. For an office or studio I highly recommend them, because those places have budgets that facilitate rotating out this equipment. And for what you get - given the high quality of the screen - they are a VERY good deal even at Apple’s prices. However if you are going to spend this kind of money on a new computer I don’t see why you wouldn’t get a two or three year old Mac Pro second hand. A used Mac Pro due to its expandability and better architecture will last you much longer than a new iMac.
But then I don’t think you even need something that pricey. I picked up an abandonned MacBook that was broken and fixed it. It cost me nothing more than some RAM, a hard drive, and some time to clean out the crap that was gunking up the inside. The machine works fine for my Unity dev work. The only app it has trouble with is SketchUp and that says more about the fact that Google is killing the Mac port of that app than anything else. I bet you that you could find something like this where you are, and have both a Mac and your workhorse PC. I’ve seen the sam model of MacBook sell routinely for $400 on eBay which I would think would be the equivalent of 200 pounds or 300 Euro.
Anyway, this is the last time I’ll push this angle. But my philosophy with computers is either buy the high end of the latest machine (like the MacPro) when you can afford it (which is unlikely in this case) or go for the cheapest thing you can find that will get the job done over the next few years. And this later case is almost always a second hand machine.
So thats my piece. I’ll leave you be with your decision. I hope you find something that you can enjoy playing with Unity.
I’ve explained my philosophy before on these forums, but I’ll state it again for fallingbrickwork’s sake.
Macs have insanely good resale value. You don’t need to upgrade a Mac. The way you “upgrade” a Mac is to buy a completely new one. Somebody is inevitably going to pay you a handsome fee for the old one. Then you take that cash and pay for the majority of a late model with it.
The only way this won’t work out for you is if you totally trash your computers. But a trashed computer probably isn’t worth upgrading, either.
Jessy, I think that can be a good plan to keep your computer fresh at less cost than it would cost you otherwise, but I’ve found it more efficient to do it my way. I’m essentially the guy that buys the computer used so that someone like you can buy the latest and greatest. I think from the standpoint of spending the least on hardware, buying used comes out ahead of trading in a machine for the newer model. Nevertheless given that there are pros and cons to both sides of that trade, picking the best strategy depends on what you want.
In your case it sounds like you only want one computer at a time, and would prefer that it be as new as it can be. In my case, I like to minimize my expenditures and have multiple machines for the house network.
Of course it does. But if you buy a used Mac, you can still trade it in for the next used Mac. Not only is the resale value of Macs fantastic, but so is the longevity of their ability to be sold. I can’t stand the lack of productivity that comes from not having new tools, but it’s all a matter of budget. (Personally, I have just accumulated a ton of debt over the past few years in order to build up and maintain my tool collection. :o)
Two at a time, sort of - my girlfriend and I use the same model of computer. Then we sell them and get new ones at the same time.
I have no concept of a house network, however. I cart my laptop around with me everywhere, and dock it into my crazy studio hub when I need to do serious work. I’ll use the iPhone if I don’t feel like unplugging those millions of cables and ejecting drives.
A Mac Mini might solve your price concerns. They are generally good, and a friend of mine who was in the same situation as you bought one of the newer ones to develop iPhone games on. Integrated graphics isn’t really going to be an issue for developing iPhone games.
I personally have been using Apple laptops for about 15 years now. I have a 15" display Macbook Pro, and an external monitor. You might consider a 13" macbook pro and external monitor. A 20" display is only around $200 here, so this seems to be a rather good compromise-- more screen real estate when you’re at home, but still a portable computer.
Generally, Macs perform very well, and much of what you might perceive as performance loss by going to another processor is gained back with a better OS. I think this difference will be more dramatic when Snow Leopard is released (Which will be a $10 upgrade for you since you’re buying a machine close to the release of the new OS.)
Don’t listen to people about compatibility issues. You don’t actually need to run windows apps, and anything you might need (except for games from stupid publishers) you can get for the Mac, and generally in a better form. Office isn’t great, but iWork is.
