1 GB microSD on MAC

Don't try any other micros SD cards. They may be damaged by the high voltage signals.
As Sparkfun says about their shield:

All new microSD shields have a voltage converter chip on-board that converts the Arduino 5V signals to 3.3V signals in accordance with SD specifications. No more 'blown up' SD cards!

The best approach is to use a level shifter like these adapters/shields

You could try resistor level shifters but these don't work well with many cards. If you try this, slow down the SPI clock.