WordPress not working locally

Question

I am attempting to get a local version of a live WP site working. I have pulled down the entire file structure. I have a copy of the DB. After setting up locally, I get a few random issues such as:

1. Permalinks not working properly
2. Javascript error
3. Content generally not loading properly.
4. 500 errors (probably caused by the .HTACCESS)
5. This error caused by a plugin: Warning: Parameter 1 to ace_where() expected to be a reference

I suspect it has something do with a server setting of which I am unaware. The live server is IIS. I am running OSX with the built-in Apache.

I have many other WP installations working fine locally. Any thoughts, comments, or suggestions are appreciated.

Here is the .htaccess:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^client.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ "http\:\/\/www\.client\.com\/$1" [R=301,L]
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /~client/
RewriteCond /home2/client/public_html/wp-content/sitemaps%{REQUEST_URI} -f
RewriteRule \.xml(\.gz)?$ /~client/wp-content/sitemaps%{REQUEST_URI} [L]

RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /~client/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Answer 1

If you're on OSX, look into MAMP. It's developed with WordPress in mind and generally works without any further configuration. Just copy your files into the web root directory, set up an empty database, and install.