Get more done with Terminal.app

By: Jeremy W. Sherman. Published: . Categories: Under the Hood. Tags: terminal.

A terminal with a few tabs. The selected tab shows the text of this post in an Emacs buffer.

You use a Mac. You are comfortable with your Mac. But the terminal remains a foreign land. When forced into Terminal.app, you type what you’re told to, hit enter, and cross your fingers that you didn’t break anything.

You once felt the same way about using the Finder. With exposure and guidance, you will become as comfortable typing commands into the terminal as clicking around the Finder.

Why go through the pain of learning the terminal when you’re already comfortable with the Finder?

Power, choice, availability, and portability. That’s why you should learn the terminal.

In the coming weeks, we’re going to throw out Finder, Aqua, and the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. We’ll hear tales of the days of tele-typewriters, time-sharing, and bearded wizards. We’ll learn their secrets, we’ll learn their language, we’ll learn their tools: We’ll learn to be wizards. (Beard optional.)