CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

You can pretty much follow these instructions:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Standalone+Installation+Guide

If you aren't all that familiar with PHP/mySQL then I would recommend you install and run MAMP: http://www.mamp.info/en/mamp/index.html

That will give you everything you need in a nice package without having to do any big changes. the only thing that will probably be tricky is civimail config (but that always is).

the install is quite similar on mac and linux. you just need apache, php, & mySQL up and running.

like i mentioned, you might want to use MAMP as it makes getting the above pretty easy out-of-box. That will accomplish step 2.1. You can't use the same commands as 2.1 describes to install apache, mysql, & php straight up. If you don't want to use MAMP, then Mac OSx comes with apache already installed, but you would need to install PHP and mySQL. This is why I suggested MAMP if you don't feel comfortable installing these for yourself.

Then on Step 2 part 4 you will need to put the civicrm files in your MAMP htdocs folder. Then on 2.5 you can either set permissions in Shell or you can do an apple-i command on the files folder and expand the permissions area.you would give read access to everyone. then in 2.6 you will need to replace the http://localhost/civicrm/standalone/index.php link with the url for the mamp install (once you install MAMP, it will open your browser to a url; you would just have that url be in front of the /civicrm).

all the other instructions should be the same.