When I ran the last auto-update on my mac, it prompted me to close iTunes before it could update and all it had was a continue button. I almost took a screenshot. To be fair though this is much less of a problem than what you mentioned with Microsoft because the only application you had to shut down was the one you were updating. So I guess it was all right in this case because I had already clicked the button to say to take the iTunes update, so I should be okay with closing the app. Honestly whenever I run any update whatsoever I am still in the mindset where it is best practice to always expect to have all apps shut down and then do a reboot, then hit the auto-update again.