Moving WP to local machine using Mamp and a Mac

im having exactly the same problem.

this seems like a common issue…

Your database has references to the external blog. You should do a couple of things to get it working (or maybe you already have, in this case this reply is for future reference):

your config file of wordpress

define('DB_NAME', 'insert databse name here');
define('DB_USER', 'root');
define('DB_PASSWORD', '');
define('DB_HOST', 'Localhost');

Localhost with capital!

in your sql-window, type

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = REPLACE(option_value, 'https://www.your-livesite.com', 'https://your-local.site') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = REPLACE(guid, 'https://www.your-livesite.com','https://your-local.site');
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, 'https://www.your-livesite.coml', 'https://your-local.site');