Which MacBook for Unity3D

I am going shopping for a MacBook today, primarily to use for Unity - (I need iOS publishing capability). I'm new to Unity - developing a simulation game as part of a PhD project - will be multi-platform 3D dev, not just mobile, but I don't expect I'll be doing super high-end graphics.

So, which model should I be looking at to get good performance? Which is the 'minimum'? Which becomes overkill? I don't mind spending a bit more to get something that will perform well but I don't want to waste money on something that will make little difference.

http://store.apple.com/uk-edu/mac/compare

I assume the MacBook basic is a no go - I was thinking Pro, but people on here seem to suggest Air works OK? If I'm looking at Pro, will one of the Retina models make THAT much difference? Which spec? SSD vs Flash? i5 or i7? I am not a hardware geek at all so any advice appreciated!

 

Any current Mac will run Unity just fine. That includes the basic MacBook. More power will simply run it faster; less power means it will run slightly slower. You may not feel this difference at all, unless you're pushing the envelope with your polygon counts or fancy shaders or some such.

Some people really love the Retina display. I don't have one yet, so (for now!) I claim it doesn't matter all that much.

Flash and SSD are the same thing (SSD is "solid state drive" which is tech-speak for "no moving parts"). Flash (or SSD) drives are lighter and (slightly) quieter than hard drives, as well as faster to read, but generally slower to write. They're also quite a bit more expensive than hard drives. 512MB is livable if you're not doing much else with it, but you can quickly fill it up if you do any video editing, or install other big apps like Unity, so I recommend getting at least 1TB storage if you can manage it.

i5 vs i7 is unlikely to make a difference you can notice.

HTH,
- Joe

 

Note that Unity doesn't currently support retina displays, but it's on the roadmap for a later version, probably 5.3. (It will work on a retina display, it just won't actually be "retina".) And yes, what's "minimum" and what's "overkill" depends on what you want to do with Unity, not Unity itself.

--Eric

 

Brilliant! Thanks both! I thought that about SSD vs Flash but was confused as on the spec for the non-Retina Pro, it's described as SSD - on the Retina version, Flash. Shopping time...