My brother is looking into buying a mac laptop... He was about to buy the MacBook, but he was told that video editing would suffer without a decent video card... Is this true? or will he be fine with the gma950?

final cut pro renders with processor and not video card. just keep that in mind.

I know Motion requires a better video card but for FCP or Livetype the GMA950 is fine. The only drawback is that it only have 1 firewire port and you'll eventually have to get an external drive and want to capture to it I personally dont know how well with both items on the same port via a hub.

The upcoming final cut will just like motion, render via the gpu.
Avid does this allready, if they'd only make an universal avid.