Why doesn’t .bashrc run automatically

The approach given here looks a little simpler—maybe it would work for you?

If you don't want to remember to type "quit" instead of "exit", and you're using bash, just add the following to your .bashrc or other shell startup script:

trap '/usr/bin/osascript -e "tell application \"terminal\" to quit"' 0

What's it do? When the shell receives signal 0 (zero), that is, told to exit, it will execute this command as the last thing it does. This allows your shell, etc, to exit gracefully, and asking Terminal.app to exit via applescript makes sure it does the same. In other words, type 'exit', and your shell exits, then Terminal quits, all cleanly and the way nature intended.

The full thread can be found here.

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.