Too true! I have spent most of the morning coming to the same conclusion while getting rewrite rules working on Leopard. I have written up a quick blog post in case anybody else is having the same problems. http://happyworm.com/blog/2009/02/18/configuring-leopard%E2%80%99s-apache-to-work-with-all-rewrite-rules/ and have linked to this post by way of a quick explanantion.