Why do you definitely still want iTerm2?

The only feature that I find even remotely compelling is mouse support, but so few programs handle mouse input that it largely doesn't matter. People always mention split panes, but I've never had a desire to vertically split my terminal window. If I ever did have such a desire, I'd probably just use tmux. And yes, iTerm2 claims to have some form of tmux integration, but I believe that's basically just using iTerm2 split panes to represent tmux panes, and I don't get why that's any better than just using tmux directly.

So besides mouse support and split panes, what does iTerm2 offer that Terminal.app doesn't? Some of the answers I've heard in the past are "256 colors" and "color themes", both of which Terminal.app supports.

I've tried using iTerm2's tmux support and found it to actually be less friendly than just using tmux directly. Definitely a YMMV thing, I suppose, but I was seriously baffled.

One thing I heard from several people in a previous discussion is that iTerm2 makes a thin outline around the terminal window and since they often have overlapping terminal windows (that are presumably opaque with black backgrounds), Terminal wasn't as usable. This has changed with Yosemite's Terminal, though.

Huh, I never noticed the very thin outline around Terminal windows in Yosemite. Neat. I've been using a slightly-transparent dark background with blur for years (which gets slightly more transparent for background windows). That always made it really easy to visually distinguish overlapping windows. But I can see the border being useful for people who have completely opaque windows (with black backgrounds).

I use split panes all the time. Never got on with terminal multiplexers myself. Other stuff I like about iTerm2:

- configurable word boundaries for word selection by mouse

- X-style copy/paste (middle click to paste current selection)

- dabbrev-style word completion from current buffer, though I've not ended up finding this as useful as it seems it should be

But if you don't value any of this, then maybe you don't want it? Let me edit my post to fix this.

Thanks for the response. But yeah, none of that sounds like things I'd want. Especially X-style copy/paste, I'm really glad Terminal.app doesn't do that (although interestingly, middle-click actually does paste the OS clipboard, but there's no auto-copy of selected text).

I don't use a Mac, and on Linux I use plain xterm. Does the job, is fast, and you can spawn a lot of them cheaply. Arranging them is easy with a tiling wm.