The circuits required to drive each of the configurations are shown here. The Bipolar motor needs 8 transistors connected in a dual H-Bridge configuration to drive the motor while the unipolar motor needs only 4 transistors connected to ground. Early applications of stepper motors often used the unipolar configuration since it required fewer transistors to drive and did not require a level shift to drive the upper transistors of an H-bridge. So if the unipolar motor is much easier to drive, why would a bipolar stepper motor be used?