"The evolution of the species"

... or so proclaims the banner on the Mac OS X page.

And so I thought, when I (finally, yes ducky) got a swanky new G5 iMac yesterday. After all, it's a fusion of two bright sparks of the non-crash-prone-Windows world, a happy marriage between the classy white fruit and the oh-so-stable workhorse that is UNIX.

The fact that OS X is based on FreeBSD, a platform that I'm familiar with, lent strength to the belief that few things could go wrong without me messing around and poking at the internals.

So it was with due aplomb that, halfway through an automated system update, the screen turned dark and the iMac proclaimed in several languages:

You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.

With the system frozen in place, the only thing to do was follow the instruction - so I held down the Power button for several seconds. The iMac rebooted, background turned blue, the "Welcome to Macintosh" screen was displayed for a few seconds, and then it stalled. I could still move the mouse and adjust screen brightness and speaker volume from the keyboard, but nothing else would happen.

Fantastic. My first day with a Macintosh and I manage to cause a kernel panic.