I've dropped apache completely. I've got nginx in front of php-fpm (wigh fcgiwrapper/spawn-fcgi for things w/ legacy cgi like nagios/collectd) and uwsgi.
You can easily find appropriate nginx rewrite rules for the major php apps like wordpress and menalto's gallery2. And for performance's sake it's all in the server config, so there isn't a disk access to read the .htaccess file to figure out if there are rewrite rules that need to be considered.
It's even better for apps, like django, which keep in mind delivering static files out of the hands of the app server. And configuring nginx to serve static files instead of hitting app servers is a piece of cake.
And for those really wanting max performance, there are plugins for direct access to memcache/postgres or even writing your web app directly in the config file with something like the lua plugin.