CENOCRE  Apache is one of those things like Windows, it's popular, but not because it is great. It has many idiotic flaws and the whole server will go down for incredibly stupid reasons that would be analogous to a car not starting because a valve cap is off.

I have been migrating my servers to Litespeed and Abyss. Both are faster, MUCH easier to configure, utterly stable, have easily accessible features, and are much more tolerant to configuration errors (a very minor error will not take the entire server offline. They have free versions and the little bit that they cost for most other versions is well worth the lack of headaches.  
(Version 2.2.8)

YBART  I would recommand any user interested in recent Apache and more generally open source software to install macports and get Apache compiles and customized from it.

As a thumb of rule, relying on a packaging system has many advantages. The drawback is that the software you want might not be packaged, in that case, it is not recommanded to try to install itself but rather add the package yourself, or ask the community to do it.  
(Version 2.2.8)