Stalled Safari/iPhoto Downloads OS 10.8.2

Both apps have been showing only a couple of minutes remaining for 2+ hours. There is also a small window stating that Safari needs to be quit before the update can finish but Safari is not running.

While trouble-shooting the problem I accidentally opened Safari and it indicates that it has been updated to 6.0.2. I cannot quit App Store while updates are pending.

I couldn't force quit the installation process nor could I restart the Mac from the Apple Menu.

I finally took advantage of my extended AppleCare and called Apple. We came to the conclusion that the only option was to shut off the MBP via its power button and see what happened.

As it turned out, nothing much happened except I had to start over the iPhoto download. I should have been able to figure this out myself but the warning message that interrupting the update "might damage your computer" gave me pause...

The ironic thing is that I didn't really want to upgrade iPhoto because I never use it. Why download a 1.15GB update for no reason? But since updates cannot be skipped like earlier OS versions, I simply got tired of being reminded that I had software that needed to be updated.