Hi,

The installation instructions I downloaded say to reconfigure the
terminal of a Mac but the Apple people I consulted advised me not to
do that. They say reconfiguring the terminal is outside the warrantee
and they see it as potentially destroying the computer!

I heard of this before, but it's -to put it bluntly- nonsense. You can't really "destroy a computer" by reconfiguring some files. What can happen is that you get enthusiastic, start experimenting late at night and go too far, making the computer unable to boot. Then you re-install the OS; many tinkering Linux people did that once or twice. The hardware will stay totally fine. That won't happen when following instructions about installing a simple to configure language like ChucK though.

I think it's a bit childish of Apple to claim something like that will void your warranty as configuring stuff is a perfectly normal part of using a computer and the terminal is there specifically for that sort of task. If I had been there I would have asked them whether Apple's are especially fragile, considering they could be damaged that easily (that's of course nonsense, but that's what they seem to be implying)

You can see the terminal and sudo as a electric drill; very useful to have and a essential part of many common tasks but still it's better to keep it outside of the reach of children and not to play with it at 4am after some sampling triples. With experience you grow more comfortable with it.

Is there another way to install ChucK without altering the terminal?
Thanks for advice,

As noted by others; there is the miniAudicle. A fine tool as well and often more convenient than the terminal version. After a while you may want to install the terminal version as well, for example to use ChucK together with other programs/ languages in some automated way.

Good luck!

Kas.