Can you play Sims 3 on MacBook Pros??

Hi – I have a 13” MacBook Pro (late 2011) with 8GB memory, 500GB HD, 2.4 Ghz processor, Intel HD 3000 graphics card, running Lion 10.7.4. I have, and run reguarly, all the Sims 3 expansion packs, stuff packs, and a sizable amount of extra content. If you have the very latest updates for Lion and Sims 3 (as of this response), you should be good to go. We have just gone through a 6-month phase of problems with graphic card/game compatibility and it is vital that you have the very latest updates of both for smooth playing – Otherwise you will be getting graphic glitches, crashes, DVD errors, etc.

The base game shouldn’t slow you down much, but it you have *everything* like me, shut down all open applications before running and even then, I still experience crashes if I don’t save often (clearing out the memory). I find it necessary to keep at least 75GB free on my HD to run it smoothly. Others may not need to go to that extreme, but it’s a honker of a game when you have all the add-ons and I ride it hard. The game functions fine with the sole exception of the screen capture function – The ingame version does not work for Macs (with no fix in sight) and you will need a third-party screen capture program to do so.

Please note that the Mac version of the game is buggy at times and new expansion packs/updates often set off a new round of problems – EA is PC focused. But the bottom line is… Lots of trouble recently, seems to be largely fixed on both sides, yes it will run on your MacBook Pro – Individual experience may vary. For others browsing into the topic, I can add that I was previously playing this on a much smaller, older MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard and did not experience any trouble on that (other than the random bugs in the game itself, now fixed). The introduction of Lion and the latest round of graphics cards in late 2011 are what caused the most serious trouble and I think we are mostly through that now.