As far as I can tell you have to rewrite all your applications to use this. So he's not really advocating "a cool new terminal," he's advocating a "new Unix pro

As far as I can tell you have to rewrite all your applications to use this. So he's not really advocating "a cool new terminal," he's advocating a "new Unix programming toolset, with accompanying terminal, to replace the BSD/GNU tools." This is great, and I wish you all the best of luck, but it looks like you're just rewriting Applescript. Also, the reason Unix tools don't toss around JSON/XML/MIME is for sheer simplicity. It's a zen thing, something you OSX guys wouldn't understand. Catting a png and getting a picture is nice though.