You don't have to build emacs to get a modern version without all the Aquamacs hoo-ha. I've been using the build at http://emacsformacosx.com/ ever since carbon emacs was discontinued. It's a nice, no surprises build.
No, I was more referring to how you have to override a bunch of environment variables in the build and do some edits to Makefile.in to prevent irritating warnings about non-existent directories when you build it yourself. There's nothing wrong at all about http://emacsformacosx.com.
