The example demonstrates the general update pattern in D3 by animating changes to a bowl of fruit, showing apples and lemons as colored circles with labels. It uses D3 v5's `data()` with enter, update, and exit selections to add, remove, and modify fruits over timed intervals. The code applies `selection.merge()`, ordinal scales for color and radius, and SVG rendering with `circle` and `text` elements, while the fruit data is defined in plain JavaScript arrays.