I want to play MAME again, I've haven't played it since the MacMame days, but all this SDL stuff now confuses me. Isn't there a simpler way to play Mame? Or SDL for Dummies & Noobs might work too. lol
compiling it yourself isn't that difficult, but you could try out MAME OSX. Not quite up to date (based on MAME 0.135) and I have noticed performance issues with CPS3 games (street fighter 3), but anything else worked fine for me.