I'm sorry that you're getting frustrated, but there's really not much else that can be done.
The same error is returned.
Is your server still telling you that there's an error with the .htaccess file in that directory? As that was the only error message that you've given us so far it's really hard to see any other issue. If the file isn't there, then your server has a problem and thinks that it's there. I'm not sure what could be done about that as there's no way for anyone here to see what's happening on the server.
I do admit that it is very strange that it's happening both locally and on the live server. Unless they are exactly the same setups normally one or the other will be a problem, but not both. Again, without access to the server, that's very hard to try and diagnose because we just don't have any way of seeing what's going on under the covers there.
There is a good chance that the documentation is out of date. The codes pages are all run the same way that the forums are, by volunteers, so things can get out of date and need to be updated by people that see this. From what I've seen here, yes that code is out-dated, but the basis of it all is still there, and it's only commenting out one line and adding in a line to force $is_apache to be true. That's all pretty easy to do.