Apple - Use MacVim as standard Terminal?

You're confusing the terminal with the text editor, as other commenters have pointed out. Still, there are a number of ways to make the terminal more vim-like, or vim more terminal-like.

If it's vi-style keybindings in the terminal you're after, add set -o vi to your ~/.bash_profile (assuming you're using bash). This will allow you to use vi-style keybindings at the command line (hjkl movement, modal editing, etc.)

If you just want to be able to execute unix commands from within vim, prepend ! to the beginning of those commands at the (Mac)Vim command line. For example :!pwd will print the working directory.

There are also plugins like Conque which allow you to run a shell from within Vim, which sounds like it may be exactly what you're after.

This is an old thread, but just in case someone else has this question:

mvim -v

If you are looking to navigate and open your files from within VIM, there are a couple things I suggest trying out.

:Sex

:Sex in VIM or MacVim splits the screen and lets you navigate the file system to find a file. I have this bound to ;o in my install.

NERDTree

NERDTree is a VIM add-on that gives you a navigable tree view of the filesystem on the left-hand side of VIM. :NERDTreeToggle ~/path/to/whatever/ will open NERDTree for you, and the root of the tree will be ~/path/to/whatever/. In my VIM installs I use my home directory, and have it aliased to Control+o in .vimrc:

map <C-O> :NERDTreeToggle ~/<CR>