Unity is horrible to use on Mavericks. How long yet?

I tried to restrain myself from writing this kind of topics but... no longer.

Since I have upgraded my OSX to Mavericks, and Unity to version 4.3, the software is literally impossible to use.

It freezes and feels sluggish ALL the time:
- When compiling new scrips
- When hitting Play button
- When moving into Full Screen mode
- When moving between desktops
- Debugging the code freezes the whole software and stays like that forever.

Also, I need to mention that my machine is decent. Nothing fancy (iMac 2011), but before an upgrade, both OS and Unity worked like a charm. I know that there is already a ticket on the Issue Tracker, but all the Unity Mavericks community awaits impatiently for any update in this matter from Unity Team. For how long the software will remain unusable? I use Unity for university projects as well as my own, private ones, but this breakdown slows my workflow dramatically - each test cycle takes forever, and I cannot debug at all!

I have paid lots of money for the top software - there are, however, high expectations going along with that price.

Unity, when?

 

Did you try uninstalling and reinstalling Unity?

 

I've tried installing/re-installing almost all versions from 4.0 to the latest one, nothing worked. Also tried lot of hints and tricks found on Google, no luck.

 

The problem is that neither Unity nor Apple seem to be able to reproduce the issue, though enough people have reported it so it's clearly a real problem. I've held off on Mavericks myself mostly because of this.

--Eric

 

...Do you have two monitors?

 

No, only one monitor and one graphic card too (RadeonHD6970). It's a recent iMac (late 2012). I've made few bug reports with our project but it doesn't seem to help figure out where the problem comes.

 

Damn, I was having this same issue when I had two monitors set up for individual spaces so I figured that might be it.

 

I noticed the unity editor stalls quite often on Mavericks when I turn wifi/internet off. But right when I turn it back on unity runs smooth again.

 

Almost unusable for me, my Mac is kind of old, but I get complete freezes of 5-15 seconds quite frequently, and have severely degraded performance when playing games in the editor.

For now I've moved to the laptop, but would love a fix

 

To the OP - did you make sure to create a detailed bug report to Unity with your findings/logs/videos/etc? Anything that could potentially help them figure out what's going on would be a big help. I know this doesn't help your current situation but it seems as neither Apple nor Unity Tech. know the answer yet.

 

From my own experiences, the problem is hardware related. It was happening on my old machine (2011 iMac), but it doesn't happen on my current model MacBook Pro. Both running the exact same version of Mavericks and Unity.

 

Thanks for all your suggestions.

I'll try to reinstall the OS from scratch and install a fresh copy of Unity (though there were poeple saying it doesn't help at all).

I'll keep you posted.

 

I confirm there is no issue with Mavericks on my Macbook pro. maybe it is a Mono thing? since I dont use it.

 

Lol, mono is built-in to unity, you can't "not use mono" and have unity installed.

 

MonoDevelop. Mono and MonoDevelop are two very different things. But no, it's not a MonoDevelop thing from what everyone is saying, it's a Unity thing. (Or a Mavericks thing.)

--Eric

 

Right, thanks for correcting. Yes I use MonoBehavior all the time. No I dont use Mono develop on the Macbook Pro. I upgraded to Mavericks 2 weeks back and have no issues as suggested by the OP. Have deployed the same project all year to several mobile platforms, but no issues on Mavericks knock on wood.

Edit: have 2012 MBP and use Unity 4.3.2 on 2nd monitor if that helps, but now im nervous that ive been lucky. Looks like many are suffering with freezes

 

I too have a late 2012 iMac and use Mavericks, but Unity runs as smoothly as ever. MonoDevelop has always crashed but I use Unitron anyway, though it sounds like that's not the issue.

 

I've been using it fine since Mavericks and 4.3 were released, so it could well be your system.

 

I've had it work perfectly fine on one Mavericks install (thankfully, my main development station) but near unusable on the exact same system specs on another machine but without any hardware faults.

 

No...sorry...Mono (an open-source .NET implementation) is completely different from MonoBehaviour (a Unity class) which is completely different from MonoDevelop (a code editor).

Out of curiosity, what happens on the unusable machine if you log in as a different user?

--Eric

 

Very much a problem on my 2008 Macbook Pro with 4 gigs Ram. Everything ran just perfectly on Leopard. However, with Mavericks and Unity 4.3, I'd be better off going back to my old PC, which is just sad. Hoping for a fix rather than reinstall the old OS.

Same issue as everyone else. 15-30 sec moments where the entire machine hangs (not just Unity.)

UPDATE: Since someone suggested leaving wifi ON I haven't had the issue. (I previously worked with it OFF quite often). So far so good, even when ram is largely consumed. Weird. Stay tuned...

UPDATE: Nope. Had to put my Leopard drive back in. Blissful workflow resumed.

 

RAM consumption is different in Mavericks and I wouldn't be surprised if most of your problems are actually because your computer is 5 years old and running on 4 gigs of RAM. That's not exactly a lot of headroom.

 

I got a late 2012 iMac 27, GPURadeon6970, 16GB of ram, it runs pretty fast. Pretty fast until i use Unity.

 

Well yeah, but my primary dev machine is only a year more recent than that with twice the RAM but Unity's always been a slug on larger scenes for me.

 

I was talking about the Mavericks slowdowns with a recent machine.
PS: Our project is big but scenes are very tiny and lights.

 

This sounds like an issue with App Nap. There should be an update available to fix this. It's something Unity can also fix with a couple of hacks.

 

It's also something you can fix yourself, if that's the case. You can just right click on the Unity application in the application folder, click "get info" and toggle the "prevent App Nap" option.

 

It's not the case, unfortunately. Or if it is, the solution is not so simple.

 

No,
That was one of the very things I've tried (and still set to Prevent App Nap) but nothing changes, Unity remains unusable on Mavericks.

 

Right, so I've performed a clean install of Mavericks (that was actually my first time doing this since purchase). It took me half of a day to make a backup of my files, download and install the software - I hope it was worth it.
Maybe that makes a difference whether a system was installed as an update or from scratch like this time.

I'll let you all know if anything has changed.

 

I can't report any issues with Unity and Mavericks

However, so far I would advise everyone to stay away from Mavericks in general. I hadn't had this many freezes in all my time using Win 7 than in the very short period after upgrading to Mavericks. Switching from Safari to Firefox apparently solved it for the moment, but other apps give me some weird behaviour as well... if they can't get their S*** together in Cupertino I'm gonna switch back for good.

 

I've played around with Unity and it works A LOT better now. MonoDevelop feels faster and Unity is not slow and sluggish anymore.

Just to remind: The fix for me was to format OS partition and install the fresh copy of Mavericks via USB. I guess that overriding OS with the existing one without formatting HDD first won't work (haven't tried though).

But Debugging still doesn't work!

 

On Leopard, the machine runs flawlessly with 4 gigs. In fact, I popped my old (Leopard) drive back in and I've never been happier.

Even after hours of nonstop work the machine is flawless. Meaning, it remains highly responsive flipping between Maya, Unity, Monodevelop, Safari, and different books. This is why I was calling out the issue. Because on Leopard, everything works perfectly, even on 4 gigs. (Which I normally would never expect to be true, but it is).

So, in my case, going back to Leopard was the perfect (temporary) solution.

BTW, App Nap settings did not help. Mavericks install was an update over a carbon copy of a Leopard drive.

 

Ah, maybe that's it! Owning a slightly older Mac Pro I got recently (a 2008 model I think) there are often frequent freezes to the screen. It is a strange error.
(Then again, maybe it's just my dinosaur of a computer )

 

Unity folks found a bug in Mavericks OpenGL drivers. They will possibly step by and give more information on the issue. So please, remain calm and don't throw your old computers through the window! Not yet!

 

If it's any consolation to UT, Luxology Modo also has OGL issues on mavericks.

 

Guys, simple invest 1k and buy a windows computer with windows license. Don't expect unity3d a good support given its amount of users.

PS: it is a joke

 

I have been using Mavericks and for me 4.3.3 speed boost no crashing at all so far, just slower than normal.
But I don't have a older mac book pro, so I understand if I had a older model it be far worse

 

That's great to hear! Can't wait to see the fix in the next build, as reinstalling Mavericks did not fixed the issue entirely.

Looking forward.

 

Using Unity 4.3.3 on Maverick.
Macbook Pro Early 2011 with 10GB of RAM.
No problem so far.

 

Unity Free 4.3.1f1
Late 2012 Macbook Pro Retina 8GB
Mavericks

Unity has been working fine as far as I can tell. It looks like doodoo on a Retina display, though, so until their optimize I've been using it on a monitor.

 

This Should Be Easy To do, don't install mavericks!
This is clearly the operating systems fault witch is causing a traffic jam (a development slow down or pause) in some users who have projects and use a mac with mavericks installed. This is even causing an issue to other people who use mavericks but don't use unity or developer like applications https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5491144?tstart=0 When they made mavericks free in the App store I clearly knew a big problem might occur, and it did with unity. So to fix this issue, well from what I know and i believe is the only way to do it. you need to reinstall the previous operating system like Lion, Mountain lion. and the result is, the workflow is incredibly smooth compared to mavericks, its a hell of a lot faster to use than S***ty mavericks.

I even downloaded some utility apps from the asset store and did a little comparison, unfortunately i did not take a screen shot. but I use memory clean to allow more free space on my RAM allowing the computer to work better, and it did a huge improvement. I used to have like only 85.65MB of of free space on my RAM, when i use memory clean It cleans it and now I have like 2.74GB of free space on my RAM and performance is increased. and also don't leave so many programs on, such as Skype, games, safari, or any unnecessary programs that are on. But anyways to point out this may have nothing to do with unity and its an issue that APPLE has to fix. I was disappointed when I heard this -

What the hell?
why can't they? What "we don't have enough evidence to reproduce this" you got to be kidding me. if i can attempt to make a reproducible scene.

1. Reproduce this in any Mac that has Mavericks installed.
2. Make A scene
3. Put a lot of crap in the scene (particles, buildings, shadows, post processing, any crap you can put that can make a detailed but unoptimized scene)
4. While building or adding more to the scene you may start to notice the shutters, freezes, lags.
5. if you don't experience any of this try leaving some programs open, such as safari.
6. if nothing happens to you than I don't know what you did or are doing.

so to wrap this all up, Its a mavericks operating system issue or it might be a unity issue.
and if i can point out is that in the system requirements on unity, I don't see "Mavricks" could it be that unity is not fully compatible with mavericks yet?

Anyways, so this is the way I know how to get rid of mavericks and use a previous operating system.

1. Save and backup anything you need and have into an external hard drive
2. Format your hole entire computer (not the whole thing just the macintosh Hard Drive)
3. Reinstall your operating systems like leopard, lion, snow leopard, mountain lion. DONT INSTALL MAVRICKS
4. than reinstall all applications you need
5. plug in your external hard drive
6. than put everything back to place and now you can resume your projects with a nice and clean computer.
7. DONE

This may not be the best way to do something like this but its the only way I know how.

P.S I do this every month cause some of the programs I use have a 30 trial (technically a month), so than I can reinstall and use them again.
P.S.S im a bit worried that I might have heard that reformatting your internal hard drive a lot of times will hurt the hard drive and than the life span of your computer lowers ;( I'm not sure if this is true but be cautious.

P.S.S in this reply i may have been or not been accurate on some things but if your going to point them out, please don't leave such rude reply to me. i hate it when i feel discouraged, but again every is still learning from there mistakes and experiences.

 

Could you give us a little hint when can we expect that patch to be released?

 

Im coding on Xamarin and smaller code editors. Unity's monoDevelop is unusable by now.

 

Late 2009 Macbook, OSX Mavericks, Unity 4.3beta ~ 4.3.2, no problem.
However I've seen people having the same issue with Intel Graphic Chips.

 

I never actually do an update in Unity.
Will it be updated within the software or we need to download the whole 2Gb installer again?

In my place our internet is capped by the bandwith limit.

 

Same here with latest Unity version (4.3.2.1f) and a fresh Mavericks install in a 2009 iMac... where things have been running smooooothly for three years. Recent Unity versions are sluggish, as described. When Unity is not running, hiccups do not occur.

 

Any updates on this issue from experience after installing Unity 4.3.4?