I've found a complete and useful walk-through tutorial for creating a local environment using MAMP at: http://drupal.org/node/66187 and its instructions for increasing the memory limit for PHP and changing the password after creating the database are recommended. However, the following tutorials are for those who run into issues, would like to go a step further, or who just prefer to watch video tutorials.
In order to download and install MAMP, a free local testing server software, and (optionally) to implement it so the url will read http://mysite.com instead of something ugly like http://localhost:8080/mysite.com I found a simple and straightforward tutorial at
Set Up Your MAMP Like a Dev King: http://www.dangermoose.co.uk/set-up-your-mamp-like-a-dev-king/
Although there was a problem modifying the hosts file on my mac so I did a search and found this tutorial that showed me how to do that through the terminal:
How to edit the hosts file in Mac OS X – Leopard: http://decoding.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/how-to-edit-the-hosts-file-in-m...
Next, I needed to set up a MySQL database in MAMP and than download Drupal on it:
Setting Up MySQL Database and Connecting WP Account (same dif): http://www.macminicolo.net/videos/ServerVideo9.mov
And you're on your way! When the time comes to update drupal core with a minor release, see http://drupal.org/node/1223018 and if you're freaked by all the command lines, remember, they're not actually doing anything fancy except for saving a few clicks. You can simply read what the code does and just do it the old fashioned way if you prefer.
Lastly, if you are having issues with installing Drupal you can find help in the Installing Drupal Support Forum at http://drupal.org/forum/1
(if you find this wiki to be lacking or outdated we apologize and encourage you to contribute your own knowledge and research to the wiki)
(This was originally a post on my blog: www.projectdesignportfolio.com)