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Yes, the GP is a more recent advancement. Before that, you had to set the hardware for turning off.

There was a brief moment when the hardware was advanced enough to reach a safe configuration by itself, and the software was not advanced enough to need to synchronize state with everything.

But maybe there's a lesson there, and the software should be able to shut itself down in a couple of seconds in the background, just like the hardware did.

Only on early hard drives that used stepper motor actuators.

...but most people got their systems from their job in those days and so wouldn't get told this little tidbit for obvious reasons; You Must Park Before Swithing Off. I did get unlucky somewhere begin 80s when my father brought home a luggable, I didn't park, he lugged it back and the hd was damaged.

True, that was a good idea with some early hard drives, but only required if the PC was moved. In that period hard drives were a luxury, many pcs just had two floppy drives. One for the operating system and applications, the second one for data.