what i find interesting are the places where cli and gui are merged in such a way that uses (at least some of the) strengths of each. on the mac, i use quicksilver, which is kind of a gui for text-entry commands. adobe indesign and netbeans ide each have a drop-down field that's invocable by keyboard shortcut that allows you to directly access options and settings hidden in various menus and palettes by typing a few letters and arrow keys. the firefox plugin ubiquity also has these qualities, and firefox has find while you type built in. these are not terminal equivalents by any stretch, but they are real time-savers, and show the mouse up for the burdensome appendage that it is (forgive my exaggeration). i think if more gui designers and gui programmers would adopt this approach, computer interface design would move forward, imho, in a more useful and more interesting way, instead of slavishly using real-world object metaphors such as the desktop.