While the Terminal is by no means a necessary tool for the casual Mac user, it does offer a surprising number of uses to the layperson, and it’s worth learning the basics. It’s first worth addressing why you might be inclined to use the Terminal in the first place for many, it seems like nothing more than a relic of the early days of computing, or something that only offers benefits for hackers and developers. In OSX, the command line interface is called the Terminal, and I’m going to walk you through some baby steps that should help set the stage for future tutorials and independent exploration. For those who value performance and a streamlined communication path to the computer over a fancy graphical interaction system full of layered metaphors and skeumorphism, the command line is king.
Since the GUI revolution, you might expect that command line interfaces would have vanished, but that is far from the case. These simple text prompts allowed computer users to key in their commands using a language that was more familiar to the computer, and encouraged us to have a more solid understanding of how the machine interprets the metaphors with which we ask it to perform tasks for us.įor those who value performance and a streamlined communication path to the computer over a fancy graphical interaction system full of layered metaphors and skeumorphism, the command line is king.
Way back in the old days of computing, before graphical user interfaces (GUIs) became the norm, the only way to use a computer was through a so-called command line interface.
#Open terminal on mac how to
Today we’re talking about some of the basics of Terminal navigation: how to move through your file system, create and delete files. The Terminal: Less Ominous Than it Sounds Navigating the Terminal: A Gentle Introduction. Navigating the Terminal: A Gentle Introduction