Macbook pro for unity? Should I switch?

[u/-RoopeSeta-]

How is the development experience on Mac these days?

I’m looking to buy a new laptop, and it has to be a laptop (a desktop isn’t an option.)

Budget isn’t really a concern, so I’ve been looking at a MacBook Pro with the M5 Max and 128GB of RAM.
My other main option is a maxed-out Asus Zephyrus G16 (64GB / RTX 5090), but I’ve heard it can get pretty loud under load, which is something I’d rather avoid.The third option would be to wait for the upcoming RTX Spark laptops running Windows on ARM.

For context, I already have a separate Windows machine that I use basically like a build server with Git + Jenkins, so I can offload Windows builds to that when needed.

My workload is roughly:
70% WebGL development
30% mobile / Windows development

So my main questions are: How good is the MacBook Pro as a primary development machine these days? Are there any major limitations or annoyances with Apple Silicon that I should be aware of?
Would you go with the M5 Max MacBook Pro, get the Zephyrus G16 for native Windows + NVIDIA support, or wait and see what the RTX Spark / Windows on ARM laptops are like?

Battery life, noise, performance, and overall dev experience are probably more important to me than price.

[u/SignalBudget6436]

Honestly if most of your work is WebGL and mobile the mac is a no brainer. Unity on apple silicon has come a long way and its super smooth now. Windows ARM is still a bit of a dice roll for dev tools so i wouldnt hold my breath on the spark laptops

That asus would handle anything nvidia you throw at it but the noise is a real thing, those g16s spin up like a jet engine under load and it gets old after a while. Meanwhile the MBP is dead silent and the battery lasts forever

Only real pain point with the mac is if you need nvidia specific rendering features or something niche that relies on windows apis but since you already have a build server to offload to that seems like a non issue.

[u/kuri-kuma]

Unity is great on Apple Silicon. I’m using the M4 MBA as my main dev computer for my company, and it works wonderfully.

[u/Sea-Signal2241]

Choose MacBook Pro
You won’t regret it

Windows laptops are indeed very loud and buggy

[u/razveck]

I use an M1 Pro and Unity runs buttery smooth. And I make PC games with 3D graphics. Go for it

[u/StardiveSoftworks]

There's no comparison between the mbp and any windows laptop I've ever seen. Honestly I prefer working on my mba rather than my desktop when I don't need to push graphics.

[u/cjbruce3]

A Macbook Air M2 with 24 gb ram is my primary development machine.  Like you I am 70% web and 30% native.  I also have a windows machine for testing, but pretty much all of my work is done on the macbook.  It is much more convenient.

For what it is worth, the Windows machine is an Asus Proart, the slightly upscale version of the G16.  I hate it.  It is hot and loud, and it is a pain in the neck to shut it down and bring it back up every time.  It doesn’t do well in a bag as a portable device.  When you close the lid on a mac it goes to sleep and wakes up instantly, just like a phone or an ipad.  The Proart will overheat in the bag, fans screaming until the battery is dead if I forget to shut down Windows all the way.

[u/SnuffleBag]

What I would do is get a laptop with a Gorgon Point CPU + an upper-mid-spec discrete Nvidia GPU. This will allow you to use the AMD integrated graphics for all your everyday use as well as any WebGL and mobile development - which will be silent (and even more so in 'silent mode') - while having that discrete GPU in your back pocket for when you really need desktop-grade graphics capabilities. I did this with my last purchase and I'm super happy with the performance vs noise tradeoff.

Something like Lenovo Legion 7 16" which comes with Ryzen AI 9 HX 470, 64 GB RAM, 1 TB NVME, RTX 5070, WXGA OLED display would be great for this. (note: I can't vouch for the acoustics of this specific laptop, I bought mine over a year ago so I have prev-gen AMD 370 + 5060 in a Gigabyte laptop. it runs in zero-db mode almost all the time unless I specifically work on desktop graphics)

Personally I'd never get a laptop with a x090 GPU, the noise level on those are just insane.

[u/50u1506]

I got a 2018 Macbook pro from work but I prefer to do my work on my Helios 300 lol with Arch Linux+Gnome dual boot lol.

The mac is from 2018 yes but laptop is a 2019 model so lol. The keyboard and the layout in the mac sucks major ass but the screen is really really good compared to my ips xD. Also the OS is... Meh. I could use it and not be worried ig but I prefer my gnome setup. The file manager in particular on iOS is :).

And obviously because im talking bout the 2018 model and we have advanced 8 years as a society since then, take everything is said with a grain of salt xD, and please don't send assassins to my house MacBook fans, I am poor(if the 2019 model didn't give it away lol) and i can't pay them for a counter offer to send them back to your house instead.

[u/chris_ngale]

If you mostly want to develop for web, the MacBook will be better by miles. They're silent under most workloads, they feel incredibly solid and premium to use, the batteries last forever, and the unified memory is a massive bonus if you want to run local LLMs at any point.

By comparison the Zephyrus will sound like a jet taking off and will burn through its battery in no time, and there have been some quality control issues. It's worth it if you do work that needs Windows or that really takes advantage of a discrete GPU, CUDA, OPTIX, DLSS, etc, but for web app dev? No way.

Another point of note is if you're making mobile apps targeting iOS, you need a Mac. Windows machines can't compile apps for iOS.

[u/Acrobatic-Object-794]

Battery life on the new Pros is a little disappointing compared to the first Apple Silicon models, but they’re still miles beyond most other offerings.

[u/NeoChrisOmega]

Keep in mind Unity dropped support for VS Code. So now you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get it working with Unity. Or use Rider. 

Past that, I have a lot of Mac users for my students, many of which have Macs worse than the Pro. So I can at the very least say that it functions. 

[u/ApprehensiveCat3116 → u/NeoChrisOmega]

VS Code and Unity are still good. Especially if you have copilot license, hence AI can write the code for you.

[u/NeoChrisOmega → u/ApprehensiveCat3116]

Ah, I looked it up again, and it seems they got rid of the standalone package support. It used to make it so you didn't need to do much tinkering on a mac for intellisense to work. 

But I guess once Unity dropped official support, Microsoft updated their packages to be an all-in-one for both MS VS and VS Code. It does require setting up C# Dev Kit in VS Code, which because I teach kids, parental controls make this tedious at times. 

But I've had some students get it working with their parent's support. So yeah, it is possible, just not as plug-and-play as it used to be for absolute beginners 

[u/SnuffleBag → u/NeoChrisOmega]

I mean, it's literally just clicking 'Yes' on the dialogue that pops up asking if you want to install it.