Hi,
I still tend to run it for a couple of days between restarts, it is a pain that this row of shortcuts becomes unavailable but not the end of the world.
I shut it down with the red X in the top right, or right clicking on the program 'sausage' in the bar at the bottom of the screen.
I would say to anybody thinking of switching to Macs for other 'everyday' computer uses,,, DO IT!!! Life on a Mac is SO MUCH EASIER AND BETTER (and even RB and such can be run on a Mac using a vertual machine set up such as Parallels - I run RB and all my other 'pc only apps' on my Macbook Pro this way when traveling)
People hold off switching because they think they will have to 'learn' a new OS... it will take no more than a couple of hours to get to grips with Mac,, and a week or two to discover all of its hiden gems. Once you have, you will never look at a Windows box the same