I know what you mean. I have been running MAMP for maybe 5 years or more. Howard got me thinking about installing everything simply in my Mac's environment. I am not a Linux guy, and a slow but careful learner, and have not had success. I have encountered this "intl" issue in several types of installations, including XAMPP on the Mac. Ken Task has even provided me some instructions on how to rebuild stuff, but I haven't mastered it yet.
So, on my Mac, I find MAMP to be my easiest solution. On the PC, XAMPP works well. Both have the ability to have intl turned on.
On my VPS (my production moodle,) I am using MariaDB. In my MAMP, I am using MySQL. I seem to be in pretty good shape moving data back and forth. I wish MAMP contained MariaDB. Well, I sure there is a way to do this.
I am still learning, but I wanted to share some of my own experiences with you.