Advantages of using MAMP stack over Mac's native Web Sharing and downloaded MySQL I'm wondering what are the advantages of using a MAMP stack instead of Web Sharing provided with Mac natively and MySQL downloaded and installed manually?

I can see how in some cases MAMP can have latest/other versions of apache/mysql/php, but are there any other advantages?

My MCB came with Snow Leopard 10.6.6 with Apache 2.2.15 and PHP 5.3.3 - so fairly recent (although not the latest) versions.
Since they both were installed I saw little reason getting something that has same functionality.

Installing MySQL was dead simple too so that couldn't be the reason.
I'd say unified GUI integration.



With MAMP, you've got a single window to manage Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Whereas with the built-in stack, you have to active PHP manually and have another interface for MySQL (with no easy way to turn it on or off)