I'm having a tough time getting MAMP 7.3 installed on my Mac (M1, Tahoe). The previous version, MAMP 6.9, worked well, but I wanted to upgrade and now I can't get the new version to start. I keep getting an error saying 'MAMP PHP versions failed to initialize.' I tried several fixes, including reinstalling my OS, but nothing has helped. Interestingly, when I dragged the old MAMP folder back into my Applications, it started up without any issues. I noticed that in the new MAMP 7.3 folder, the conf folder and others had many PHP folder aliases, almost like there were redirects for PHP versions. Can anyone explain what's going on here? I've used MAMP for years without running into problems like this before.
3 Answers
The M1 and M2 Macs have had some compatibility issues with MAMP due to the ARM architecture. The problem with the PHP version aliasing appears to be because MAMP is trying to set up Intel-based PHP binaries that just won’t work on Apple Silicon. I recommend ditching MAMP and using Homebrew to install PHP directly—it’s a lot more reliable on M1. Alternatively, you could consider Docker or Laravel Herd for your stack.
Have you considered switching to Docker instead of using MAMP or WAMP? You can set up a LAMP stack directly from GitHub using docker-compose with Apache or Nginx and MariaDB. It might save you a lot of headaches!
I don't know much about Docker or LAMP yet, but I might give it a shot once I get the hang of it!
I managed to get WAMP to work flawlessly after installing Wine, if that helps!
I actually have PHP installed via Homebrew but couldn't pinpoint where it went wrong. Your point about the aliasing issues makes sense, especially since I was able to use MAMP without problems on M1 before, so it's pretty confusing!