MAMP
A laptop upgrade was long overdue, and though exorbitantly expensive (compared with a PC) I just had to get a Mac this time.
And then I started what I thought would be a long process of setting up LAMP.
L = In this case ‘M’ for Macintosh. Mac OS X is an operating system built over a UNIX foundation. With its cool graphics, sound and user friendly interface it’s nothing like any UNIX platform that I’ve ever seen, but I’ll have take Apple’s word for it. And I did manage to find the terminal window, the UNIX type file system and remembered that the sales person told me there’s no need for anti-virus software. 
A = Here’s where I got my first shock. The OS comes with an Apache server pre-installed. All I needed to do was to literally check the option to enable it. WOW!
M = This I had to install. The install of mysql was relatively painless. However I did miss the numerous windows installer options. After the install just get to a terminal window, start mysql and then configure.
P = PHP is pre-installed as well.
In fact, the hardest part of the process was … well, there wasn’t a hard part except perhaps to get used to the window close button (X) being on the left instead of the right!
Really cool stuff! Now I’m trying out a few IDEs, although to start with I installed my trusty Eclipse IDE. No real reason to shift to a different IDE. But purely out of morbid? curiousity i’m goign to check out the highly touted Xcode and the Aptana plugin for eclipse some time!