I finally managed to get around installing and configuring WordPress. Even though I read on the WP web site that the installation should only take 5 minutes (world famous!!) it took me couple of days, and that is no fault of WP, its just that I have decided to take the harder route and install a local mirror on my MacBook as a way to test-drive WP before I go ahead with it (plus there are other benefits that you get out of having a local mirror site of your actual web site).

The post below helped me alot. its very detailed and provide a step by step process to installing everything you need to get your WP site up and running on Mac.

http://codex.wordpress.org/MacOS_X_Local_Mirror