You might like BoxEdit when it finally makes it to MacRhino… It looks a lot like the above.
But true, Rhino does not have the notion of a fixed object “center” that stays attached to the object. That might make sense for some objects, not for others. BoxEdit and Gumball use the object bounding box center, which again makes sense for geometrically regular objects like circles, rectangles boxes and spheres, but not much sense for odder shapes.
If I want to move something up by 1 unit (or whatever distance) I do the following:
Gumball - click on the “up” arrow and type “1” and Enter. Negative numbers move in the down direction. Idem for all the other axes, plus there are the scale and rotate handles. Alt while doing any of this creates a copy. I don’t see it getting any easier than that. There are scripts and macros that I also have for common moves like rotating one or more objects 90° in either direction, 180°, mirror across one of the axes, etc… All a couple of letters and Enter.
–Mitch