Installing Laravel on MAMP

Installing Laravel on MAMP

I downloaded the latest version of Laravel from Github, unzipped it, and
then placed it inside of the htdocs folder in MAMP. MAMP is running PHP
version 5.4.10 and therefore fulfills Laravel's requirement of PHP >=
5.3.7. I tried using the terminal to install composer by entering:
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
And was greeted with an error reading:
#!/usr/bin/env php
Some settings on your machine make Composer unable to work properly.
Make sure that you fix the issues listed below and run this script again:
The detect_unicode setting must be disabled.
Add the following to the end of your `php.ini`:
detect_unicode = Off
A php.ini file does not exist. You will have to create one.
If you can not modify the ini file, you can also run `php -d
option=value` to modify ini values on the fly. You can use -d
multiple times.
When I try to load
http://localhost:8888/laravel/public/
in my browser, the PHP error log shows
05-Sep-2013 16:57:03 Europe/Berlin] PHP Fatal error: require(): Failed
opening required
'/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/laravel/bootstrap/../vendor/autoload.php'
(include_path='.:/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.4.10/lib/php') in
/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/laravel/bootstrap/autoload.php on line 17
I have a feeling that this error has a fairly simple solution, but as I'm
very new to Laravel I need to be pointed in the right direction in regards
to solving this.
Thanks.