I have spent the entire weekend trying to get electrum to work on my Mac.  First with an offline system of ubuntu and then just on my regular system.  Nothing worked.  I am using a Macbook Pro 2.2GHz intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB SDRAM and OS 10.6.8.
 
The TotalBitcoinSecurity.pdf gave very good instructions on how to install ubuntu on USB sticks.  I got to the point where I selected "try ubuntu without installing" pressed enter then the screen went black and nothing else happened.

I finally tried to just test electrum on my regular system without worrying about security.  At https://electrum.org/download.html I first tried the "Executable for OS X ".  It downloaded, unzipped but every time I tried to start it, it crashed immediately.

I then tried "sources installation" but that was worse.  The first step was "Install Homebrew." but when you click on the link you get the dreaded "404  There isn't a GitHub Page here."

That kind of stopped me cold even though I have no idea how to go about installing from the "sources"
I searched "homebrew" on GitHub but got tons of responses none of which seemed like the one I was looking for.

I Joined GitHub to put in a bug report but keep getting a message that my registration doesn't exist, even though I got an email from them and wrote down the password I used when registering.
I was hoping to reach the electrum developers here but don't think they read the newby board very often so I am hoping that somebody who knows what they are doing will pass this info on.

After having spent a week researching bitcoin, it is obvious that it is not ready for prime time.
I don't want to start buying them until I can feel comfortable that I have secure wallets to keep them in. I already lost the chance to give some paper wallets away for Christmas but I haven't given up yet.
Hoping one of these days, somebody will make Mac OS software that works.