That all said, the particular specs for the Macbook pro you listed ought to be adequate for game development, assuming you aren't looking to really tax the system. Again, libraries like GLEW or GLEE will make setting up the function pointers a cinch, just gotta double check to see which one to use. Sometimes you'll have to use an ARB extension function pointer instead of a 'core' function pointer.

That said, it's been my experience that even though they claim to support a particular version of OpenGL, its best to double check with something like GLEW's glewinfo utility to see HOW that functionality is exposed. Only recently with 10.7 does Apple claim their OpenGL driver have core OpenGL 3.2 support, which you can tell by looking at the OpenGL capabilities table on their developer website. What I've found the thing you have to careful of when using Macs for game development is knowing what is exposed through their OpenGL driver.

So, in your experience, would a MacBook Pro with Windows 7 be good for game dev? If the hardware isn't beefy enough though, I'll have to look into a PC. The price doesn't bother me because I like Macs, and I've been saving for a long time. I know equivalent PC laptops can be much cheaper, and everyone says Macs are overpriced. Would that be a respectable machine for the kind of processing I'll need for game development? Of course, I would have to dual boot with Windows 7. Now, the specs I found for the newest 17' MacBook Pro, from the Apple Store and this site: I've wanted to get a MacBook Pro for quite some time, but haven't been able to justify the price since the others handled all my needs. My computers are all out of date: two 6 year old Compaqs (desktop and cheap laptop) and a 3 year old Mac mini (2GHz Intel Core Duo, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400 with 256MB VRAM). I'm not too sure what those needs might be, which makes it difficult to decide what to do.

I need a decent laptop to handle my school work, and ideally my work after I'm done school. I just started college, and I'm taking Game Programming.

Best games for macbook pro