I agree. It did inspire me to write this however, which I desperately needed for a long time:

alias eject="hdiutil info | gawk '/^\/dev\/disk([0-9]*)\>/ { system(\"hdiutil detach \" \$1) }'"

Most people don't memorize the commands for all of these, and googling for them everytime gets old.

So instead of not remembering "tar xfz", you can not remember "mac tar:extract"? Either way, I guess you'll just end up asking google and google will tell you to use tar.

man <command>.

And if people are in the command line often enough, they do memorize the actual commands. They really, really do.

man pages don't really solve the discoverability problem.

Isn't this just layering the discoverability issue? It's another set of commands to learn, when you should be learning the real commands.

Isn't that what apropos is for?

Exactly. In addition to that, this is a chance to collaborate to build more and better commands. It's the first step to what could be a powerful and very useful developer tool.

There's already been collaboration among the various *nix operating systems.

Well, would you rather remember: `sudo shutdown -r now` or `mac shutdown`?

Would you rather remember: `pmset sleepnow` or `mac restart`?

Is there complementary `linux shutdown` and `freebsd shutdown` and `solaris shutdown`? If no, then this utility only increases cognitive load.

then this utility only increases cognitive load.

how in the world does it 'increase cognitive load'? Seems like its just your opinion. I know how to shut down a generic linux box. But mac shutdoown or mac reboot is still easier to type and remember.

FWIW, I was installing Ubuntu and had an issue with Unity, so had to use tty to update and hadn't ever shut down from the command line before. It just took me one try of 'shutdown' and a quick look at the man page to figure out what options were needed.

I see this as either being used frequently enough to be easily memorized, or infrequently enough that a quick check of the man page is fine. The real benefit is that it's a very general solution that works on basically any system, and for a wide variety of commands. As another commentor pointed out, the apropos command makes this strategy even more powerful.

Why not just do `man shutdown` to figure out the option you should use, and then either set it up with an alias or just learn it permanently with repetition?

Exactly, that is the point. Also, some commands require several parameters and it's much better having the script asking for those parameters in an interactive way.

For example: mac ssh:download-folder

sudo shutdown -r now.

1) It's already muscle memory.

2) It's not hard.

3) Other *nix OSs use is too.