I’ve just got off the phone from a Product Specialist at Apple Care.

One of the common tricks to perform to get older games to run stable under multi-core systems is to disable one of the cores. On my previous generation MacBook Black this was straightforward enough. Install XCode developer tools off the install CD, pop into:

/Library/Application Support/HWPrefs/CPUPalette.app

click to disable one of the cores and you’re laughing. Apart from the fact this doesn’t work on the new MBP. So I spent 30 minutes on the phone to AppleCare, who eventually let slip that the developer tools for the new MBP haven’t been finished yet and the ones on the included DVDs were horribly out of date.

All the effort is being focused on the new release of Snow Leopard, but there should be some new developer tools coming somewhere in the next month to resolve the problem.

So if you’re thinking of buying a new MBP and like to play some of those good old-timer games like Myst III and NeverWinter Nights, I’d hold your horses until they get the new developer tools out. I’ll update the blog when they do.