When comparing Terminal.app vs Extraterm, the Slant community recommends Terminal.app for most people. In the question“What are the best terminal emulators for Mac?” Terminal.app is ranked 3rd while Extraterm is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose Terminal.app is:
Since it is already installed by default, you don't need to worry about finding and installing another terminal.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Default terminal on Mac
Since it is already installed by default, you don't need to worry about finding and installing another terminal.
Pro Light on System Resources
Terminal.app lighter uses less system resources than iTerm having the same number of windows, tabs and processes going on.
Pro Great compatibility
Works with everything.
Pro Easily open man pages
By right clicking on a highlighted string you can easily search through the man pages for that string and the man page will open in a nice pop up window.
Pro Excellent xterm emulation support
Pro Beautiful
Terminal has nice colors and font options.
Pro speed
not the fastest ever, but for me its a good comprimise of features vs performance
Pro Cross platform
Pro Supports tab, splits and panes
You can set up your own layout with multiple splits and tabs.
Pro Shell integration
The shell integration makes it possible to group in command output in "frames" which show success/failure.
Pro Image support
You can view images and other data types like audio directly in the terminal.
Pro Keyboard based text selection
It is possible to go into a cursor mode where you can select text just like in a text editor. It even supports multiple cursors.
Pro Global shortcuts
You can configure global shortcuts to open the terminal.
Pro Keyboard friendly "Command Palette"
Just like Sublime, Atom and VSCode you can easily search and find commands from the drop down Command Palette.
Cons
Con Updates are released rarely
Terminal usually gets an update when any new MacOS version is released, which is every couple of years.
Con Tab names are volatile
The tab names never stick -- it's imperative that this should work.
Con Background images are stretched rather than clipped
Con Occasionally crashes
Working remotely with a full buffer may cause complete terminal app crash.