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Good news for aluminum iMac owners suffering from graphics-related lockups — an Apple spokesman says a fix is in the pipeline.

A small number of iMac users have made us aware that a recent 
software update issued by Apple can sometimes cause their iMacs to freeze, requiring them to restart their iMac.  We are tracking down the root cause of this bug, and will issue a software update which corrects it as soon as we can - most likely later this month.  We  apologize for the inconvenience.

Exactly what “later this month” means is unclear, but it’s good to know the issue is fixable by software. I had been considering exchanging my iMac for another one, but I think I’ll hold off.

Some iMac owners posting to Apple support forums have fixed the problem by reinstalling the operating system, then not installing the iMac 1.1 software update believed to be related to the issue. However, others who’ve tried this say it’s still happening to them.

And not everyone who has installed the update has had this issue. For example, in addition to the iMac I bought, I have a review unit Apple sent. It has the same graphics card, though a different processor. The 1.1 update has been applied to it, and it does not suffer the lockup problem.

Finally, there remains the question of Leopard. Some forum posters who are running beta versions of the next Mac OS say it’s also prone to the problem. Presumably, Apple will have this solved before Leopard’s release this month.