I really like XAMPP and it really saves me a lot of time but I have some serious gripes about the way its put together for os x.
First, its in the Applications folder, because apparently that is the Mac way, which is right but the various settings files and documents don't go there!!!!!!
There is an /Library/Application Support/ folder, the etc. folder (including symbolic from the phpadmin config etc) should be in there something like /Library/Application Support/xampp/. The document root for apache should be here too, mysql should probably store its DB's here also. Basically anything that is not the Application but variables to run it should be moved.
The user dir is not public_html its ~/Sites btw
The installer is cool, but the thing wipes my settings when I use it, and I have to manually deal with all that stuff every-time I upgrade, which is a shame as there is likely to be no changes at all in things like httpd.conf between releases yet I am for sure going to customise it...
Use a disk image for the distribution. Tiger can't do STIX out of the box. I did say about this in the english forum and a tar.gz version appeared which is good but if your interested in the recommended Mac way use a DMG disk image.
There have been many people asking about starting at boot, just add some of the solutions in the forum to the installer. Better yet get someone to make a pref pane to deal with the whole thing. I know there might not be much that can be done about this because of time and a lack of people so this is more a pipe dream.....
Anyway, this was not meant to come across so harsh, just as a gentle push