MAMP allows one to easily set up a local web server, often referred to as a LAMP setup (A(pache) M(ySQL) P(HP), but not limited to L(inux)). The ease of us is the strong selling port here. It is not terribly difficult to set up a local server using the command line, but you have to know what you are doing to configure things correctly. MAMP just bypasses that and gets you going through a pleasant visual interface. When running, your local server is preconfigured with phpMyAdmin for managing the mySQL server, and you select a local directory on your hard drive to be the directory for your site. This makes it easy to do both front and back-end development.

The ease of use. Setting up an environment is as easy as picking your engine and ports.

I love the tooling to spin up, see statuses, and manage servers quickly. The ability to have aliases and advance routing in Pro make local dev servers easy to work with. PHPMyAdmin pre-installed make management a breeze!