Query when installing plugins
Going to mark this as off-topic (Craft issues should be posted to https://github.com/craftcms/cms/issues, which I realize is a bit ironic to tell you considering you said you don’t want to use Git, but you don’t need to use Git to open a GitHub account).

That said, the issue is that Craft 3 uses Composer behind the scenes to install plugins and update itself right now. So even though you don’t need to directly interface with Composer now that the zip option is available, the system you are running on must at least be able to run Composer. And Git is a requirement of Composer.

For this and other reasons, we are planning on making Craft 3 less reliant on Composer in a future update.


  After installing on my local Mamp setup it's not obvious which files I need to upload to the live server as there isn't a plugin folder.


You need to upload the entire vendor/ folder.


  Does this mean that I won't be able to use Craft now unless I become a command line expert?


As long as your system is capable of running Composer (which it sounds like you’ve taken care of), no you shouldn’t need to run any commands from the terminal yourself.


  Even the Mijingo video tutorials which have been really easy to follow in the past have started to be full of complicated command line stuff.


Up until the Craft 3 GA launch on April 4, the only way to install Craft 3 was via the terminal. Now that a zip download is available from https://craftcms.com, that’s not the case anymore.