Apple has listened to the complaints, and as many thought, has posted a stand alone installer on their ftp servers for download. TIL article 75125 contains English, French, Dutch, Spanish, German, Italian, and Japanese versions of the installer.
Apple has also posted a stand alone installer for a new version of the Software Update utility (TIL article 75126) in question, and it is recommended that you install Software Update 1.3.1 before installing the 10.0.1 update.
The lastest version of OS X contains a number of improvements. According to Apple:
Improvements including better support for 3rd party USB devices, Classic compatibility and overall application stability as well as support for the popular open source Secure Shell service. For Japanese users, an update to the Epson printer drivers is also available.
You can find more information about OS X, and the TIL article with download links for the 10.0.1 installers, at the Apple Web site.