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I was working in software development at the time, and this wasn't seen as a problem. Colour monitors were expensive and not usually high-quality. In PC-compatibles, the Colour Graphics Adapter (640x200) wasn't regarded as adequate to be the only display on a machine; the Enhanced Graphics Adapter (640x350) appeared the same year as the original Mac, but nine months later. A good, crisp black-and-white display was perfectly competitive with a fuzzy colour one.

The Mac was designed from the start to be a GUI-based machine so clear, high-resolution graphics were a requirement. At the same time available memory was extremely limited due to cost considerations. The original Macintosh only had 128kB of RAM of which over 21kB were used by the display. Going to even 8-bit color at that resolution would have pushed the framebuffer size to 171kB, more than the machine had in total. Despite its limited memory, it still cost US$2500 at release (~US$6000 today).

This article gives an interesting (if brief) history of the Macintosh's early development showing its evolution from a 6809-based system to the final design. According to that article, the original design was for a 256×256 monochrome display taking up 8KB of 64KB total RAM.

I imagine it being a huge downgrade for some, not to have color on the Macintosh. Macintosh games were black and white in the beginning, while Apple II had color.

For back then the whole assumption of a 512x342 pixel B&W display being a downgrade from a display with an effective (*1) colour resolution of 140x192 is so strange(*2), I doubt anyone would have ever thought so back then - most definitely not me or anyone I know (*3).

Colour and resolution is a trade off in memory as both need more with greater depth. With 16 KiB of screen memory (quite a lot back then) one can do a 512x256 B&W picture, or 128x128 in 256 colours (*4).

In fact, this also goes well for the way or eye works. There are roughly 120 million rods and only 6 million cones - 2 for each colour. So roughly 60 B&W 'pixel' detectors share a single colour detector. Colour is just the frosting on the cake of human vision - the cake itself is resolution :))

So if the decision is to be made between colour added or more resolution, the first choice is always more resolution - at least until we pass several thresholds. It only makes sense to add colour if the resolution is adequate to the task intended.

Here the (later) Atari ST is a great example. It offered a crisp clear 640x400 B&W display at 70 Hz. A feature that did beat many other machines including most PCs, especially considering the price. While the classic Atari ST vs. Amiga rivalry was more on a game level (*6), on a professional level the Atari outsold the Amiga by far (*7).

This highlights the strange beast of assumptions, playing games. That wasn't anywhere near the goal for a Mac. It was supposed for professional usage. Something where programs could display output on screen (almost) as it would be rendered later in print. The same area the ST was successful in as well - in its competition to the Mac it was sometimes dubbed as 'Jackintosh'.

The ST is in fact a great example for all of this, as it provided both, clear B&W and (acceptable) colour resolutions. With the B&W mode being a huge USP (price being next) for the Atari. In fact, it made it the machine for some cash strapped professions. Like notorious under-founded antiquarians. Signum, an editor capable to handle arbitrary scripts and their ways of writing ruled that area way into the 2000s. Not to mention that mathematicians liked it for being able to produce their secret codes.

So bottom line, When there is a choice between resolution and colour, the world always goes for resolution first.

I'm especially interested in experiences of people who lived through that time.

(Asking for opinions isn't exactly what RC.SE is meant for)

As for myself, I was an Apple II user and switched to PC but always went for more resolution to get more characters on the screen than having colour. Colour was nice and made nice frames, but couldn't beat having a full line of code without scrolling :))

Now, with the basic workings clear, it seems strange at first, why, after ever increasing resolution, the industry added much colour (past classic 4 or 16 of EGA) around 1990 instead of further increasing past 640...800 pixels per line. That is, until we look at the output device. Until then CRT development was mostly a trade off from TV development. Screens and electronics for the likes of more than ~640 pixels per line diverged from general TV technology. Better electronics and finer screen masks where needed, requiring new production machinery, no longer to be shared with TV. A huge investment for a comparably low number of devices to be made.

Adding colour was a way of the computer industry to use the increasing resources (RAM) while still using the same old CRT technology - after all, such a tube doesn't care if it's fed the 640x480 in 4 colours or 256k. And while screens for high resolutions stayed rather expensive, making it more colourful did only require investment in graphic cards. It took many years and widely available cards able to do higher resolution, until screen manufacturers jumped the wagon.

The recent development of cheap high resolution flatscreens is another example of this scaling effect. 10 years ago it was quite expensive to get anything past 1280x720, nowadays with HDTV 1440 screens that are cheap as dirt and 4k TV it makes even extreme resolutions quite affordable - and that's despite the fact that computer screens are in way higher demand than they where 30 years ago. TV still rules our life :))

*1 - The basic Apple II B&W resolution is 280x192, but it takes two pixels to produce one coloured pixel. Then again, it's way more complex than that, as Apple II colour video is unlike any other, so lets stay with 140x192 for now.

*2 Or in modern consumer terms, thats 0.175 megapixels vs. 0.027 megapixels - Which would you choose?

*3 - The whole question feels a bit like ignoring resolution at all. Sure, we have reached a state where next to every device just has 'enough' - or better more than the eye can separate without help. Just, it hasn't always been that way.

*4 - Using 256 colour model as that's somewhat near to today's expectations. Back then 16 or 4 colour would have been way more appropriate.

*5 - Rods are what gives us black & white and ... well ... resolution, while cones overlay this with rough colour areas.

*6 - Where the Amiga was clearly better in technical terms, which didn't stop awesome games like Xenon, being first made for the ST. So in reality more a draw, as here the Atari held a 'good enough' position.

*7 - That is excluding special areas like Video for the Amiga or Music for the ST.

I believe the assumptions of the question are wrong. We did not buy the Mac to play games, it was more or less strictly a business machine. Main usage in the beginning around me was creation of printed material including illustrations. Slightly later the laser printer came along making it possible to create camera ready material inhouse.

Of course, I could be an exception. At the time (early 1980-s) doing process control software for nuclear power plants in Sweden. We did have special color displays used by the power plant operators, but these were expensive special stuff.

I was a VAX mainframe sysadmin when I bought my first Mac in 1985.

At the time we had Apple II computers for some purposes as well as assorted Digital terminals some expensive ones of which had colour, with ASCII and some primitive block character graphics.

The Fat Mac was amazing with its small screen showing beautiful high-resolution black and white graphics. Nothing matched the crispness of that screen. It was the best personal computer I could buy at the time in terms of sheer computing power and bitmap resolution.

I spent more on it than my car.

It was seen as a different kind of computer by the people I knew.

It was definitely not a step forward in most ways as a gaming platform, as the Apple II had many games made for it, none of which would run on a Mac, and yes, no color.

The crisp display did seem somewhat nice in its way, and there were some interesting strategy games you could play on it such as Balance of Power or Empire, but there was a bit of a "what can I play on this?" issue for Apple II gamers.

Interesting that you want to hear about 1984, it was an incredible time in the business world. I worked for a software development company which sold time management systems including hardware, software, training and conversions. I had been learning to use computers for a couple years through working in accounting and it was my job to collect on customer accounts and reconcile billing to delivery of goods and services. Computers in 1984 were not practical for the average person to have at home yet. They were costly and we had to attend a class or two usually sponsored by the company you purchased your Personal Computer from just to learn how to turn it on, what to type into the C:prompt to get the computer to wake up and start work. The memory space was minimal and we had to try to keep our expensive new equipment dust and smoke free...because yes, we were still allowed to smoke in our offices in 1984. Due to the cost, the large size of the personal computer, and the knowledge you needed to learn to operate the computer, they were only beginning to be practical and desired by the average person. At work, I used a Wang networked to our mainframe. Wang was known to the average person as the Word Processor leader then, and I must admit it was so easy and user friendly that I learned and even enjoyed doing my own typing because back in 1984, we had people who were paid to be secretaries and personal assistants and they did your typing for you. Electric typewriters were the thing and were just coming out with electric typewriters that could remember a few lines of text to repeat at your command. This was an innovation which was appreciated by secretaries all over. But the few lines were not enough and about the time typewriters had functional memories, where they could remember paragraphs or hold 2 or 3 different memories of significant text, the modern consumer had fallen in love with the personal computer and we were all saving and planning for that credit card bill or computer payment when you could get financing, to buy a computer hoping you purchased one from a company who knew how to set them up properly. Typewriters were on the way out as we began to see storage space increase and processors processing better. We were not accustomed yet to the concept of spending $800+ for something that was pretty much still a novelty and would be obsolete in a year or two. The space a personal computer took up was huge, they were heavy and if you got a printer as well, you had to move your fax machine and your entire desk was now covered with large computer equipment. It was a sign that you were on your way up, as times were fast and ppl rose quickly. We could still get by without a college degree and drug testing was not practiced yet. We could still go out for the 3 martini lunch and go back to work happily buzzed without raising eyebrows. Paychecks were huge for those of us who reached upwards, which was most ppl, miracles could happen overnight, companies were being born and succeeding quickly or dying suddenly or being successful and then getting bought out in a hostile takeover as a competitor you were about to surpass gets venture capitalists to support their venture and they buy out your company and raid it, firing everyone and using it for a tax shelter, intended to lose money to offset gain elsewhere. Apples were something on our list of owning a Cadillac or a Mercedes back then. We knew it would happen but didn't want to jump into it. If you were really successful, you kept up and purchased a new computer at least every two years. You had to make sure your new unit could play the large floppy discs becuase the new 3.5" diskettes were born and not fragile like the large black floppies were. There was no windows, which I know is not Apple software, and the internet was not anything I knew about, except for guys who ran things called Bulletin Boards. Sorry for all the details, but you said you wanted to know. Simply, nobody worried about the difference between color and black and white because most ppl used computers at work and few were in homes in 1984. We were much more concerned with deciding if we should buy Beta or VHS and then fretted over the amount movies cost to play on the Video Cassette Recorder...and it always seemed your Top Loader was going to get stuck with your fav tape in it.

Interesting that you want to hear about 1984, it was an incredible time in the business world. I worked for a software development company which sold time management systems including hardware, software, training and conversions. I had been learning to use computers for a couple years through working in accounting and it was my job to collect on customer accounts and reconcile billing to delivery of goods and services. Computers in 1984 were not practical for the average person to have at home yet. They were costly and we had to attend a class or two usually sponsored by the company you purchased your Personal Computer from just to learn how to turn it on, what to type into the C:prompt to get the computer to wake up and start work. The memory space was minimal and we had to try to keep our expensive new equipment dust and smoke free...because yes, we were still allowed to smoke in our offices in 1984. Due to the cost, the large size of the personal computer, and the knowledge you needed to learn to operate the computer, they were only beginning to be practical and desired by the average person. At work, I used a Wang networked to our mainframe. Wang was known to the average person as the Word Processor leader then, and I must admit it was so easy and user friendly that I learned and even enjoyed doing my own typing because back in 1984, we had people who were paid to be secretaries and personal assistants and they did your typing for you. Electric typewriters were the thing and were just coming out with electric typewriters that could remember a few lines of text to repeat at your command. This was an innovation which was appreciated by secretaries all over. But the few lines were not enough and about the time typewriters had functional memories, where they could remember paragraphs or hold 2 or 3 different memories of significant text, the modern consumer had fallen in love with the personal computer and we were all saving and planning for that credit card bill or computer payment when you could get financing, to buy a computer hoping you purchased one from a company who knew how to set them up properly. Typewriters were on the way out as we began to see storage space increase and processors processing better. We were not accustomed yet to the concept of spending $800+ for something that was pretty much still a novelty and would be obsolete in a year or two. The space a personal computer took up was huge, they were heavy and if you got a printer as well, you had to move your fax machine and your entire desk was now covered with large computer equipment. It was a sign that you were on your way up, as times were fast and ppl rose quickly. We could still get by without a college degree and drug testing was not practiced yet. We could still go out for the 3 martini lunch and go back to work happily buzzed without raising eyebrows. Paychecks were huge for those of us who reached upwards, which was most ppl, miracles could happen overnight, companies were being born and succeeding quickly or dying suddenly or being successful and then getting bought out in a hostile takeover as a competitor you were about to surpass gets venture capitalists to support their venture and they buy out your company and raid it, firing everyone and using it for a tax shelter, intended to lose money to offset gain elsewhere. Apples were something on our list of owning a Cadillac or a Mercedes back then. We knew it would happen but didn't want to jump into it. If you were really successful, you kept up and purchased a new computer at least every two years. You had to make sure your new unit could play the large floppy discs because the new 3.5" diskettes were born and not fragile like the large black floppies were. There was no Windows, which I know is not Apple software, and the internet was not much more than a rumor, except for guys who ran things called Bulletin Boards. Sorry for all the details, but you said you wanted to know. Simply, nobody worried about the difference between color and black and white because most ppl used computers at work and few were in homes in 1984. We were much more concerned with deciding if we should buy Beta or VHS and then fretted over the amount movies cost to play on the Video Cassette Recorder...and it always seemed your Top Loader was going to get stuck with your fav tape in it.

I personally agree with all of the answers that say something like “High quality bitmapped monochrome displays beat low quality PC color/character graphics.” E.g. for things like preparing documents for publication - affordable high quality printers were pretty much only monochrome. Why prepare a document that displays colors that cannot be printed?

Except... I don’t think the market agreed with this. I think that one of the reasons that PCs leapfrogged Macs at this time was color, and slide shows / presentations. Even with a lousy projector (more like external video), or with a lousy character based printer, color seems to beat monochrome graphics. As in, the young MBAs who could show a PC slide set with color highlighting the important points impressed more than the MBAs with monochrome slide sets produced on a Mac. The PC spreadsheet with red ink for losses was more persuasive than the printout of a Mac spreadsheet without. The PC MBAs got promoted. The Mac MBAs less so.

At the time I was a student. I thought that a well written monochrome paper or memo was what mattered. I thought that high res drawings - engineering diagrams, CAD - ideally color, but high res greyscale using shading more important than low res color - mattered more than low res color “cartoons”. I did not understand the importance of presentations and slide shows. I thought that slides should just be prepared with a word processing program and different font sizes. (Actually I still believe that - when possible I prepare slides and text documents from the same source. But the SW industry evolved to have separate programs for word processing and presentations. Presentations are important. Arguably more important than word processing.)

By the way, this was before PowerPoint. I can’t remember what the slide software was, but I remember fighting with it on Hercules Graphics Adapters (when helping those MBAs).

MS learned this lesson, and purchased what became PowerPoint early on.

I’m a computer architect (as in, I design computers, CPUs, GPUs, not buildings). At the time, I was desperately interested in how graphics would affect the evolution of computers. I bought Steve Jobs’ argument than high quality monochrome mattered more than color. I spent time designing BitBLT and other hardware support for images with small numbers of bits per pixel: 1 bit/pixel black and white, 4 bpp/16x GrayScale. I thought that 8bpp grayscale would dominate for a while, and that eventually reasonable color - 16bpp (rgba4, or rgb5), and ultimately 24bpp or 32bpp color would predominate. I neglected the “ugly” graphics modes like 16 color or 256 color, especially those that required a palette / color LUT. I was wrong in the short term, even though in the long term “nice” color eventually won out, once we could afford it. The demand for color was so high that people were willing to live with ugly tricks to get it.

I say now that my believing Steve Jobs’s spin about elegant high quality monochrome beating ugly color was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made as a computer architect.

But, again, personally I still agree with what Jobs said. It’s just that the marketplace did not. Since then, I always ask myself if my personal preferences are blinding me to what the market really wants.

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One of the other answers says that when there is a choice between resolution and color, resolution wins. I am not sure that I am disagreeing with that, as saying that there were several different markets for computer graphics, with different requirements for “good enough” resolution and color.

SW development - needs more than 50 character wide displays.

Engineering, CAD - needs high res, high DPI. Can live with monochrome, although eventually wants color. Highlight color is good enough, until really good color is available.

Business presentations - can live with 40 characters. Color more important than 1024 pixels.

Gaming - color on a low res display, even character graphics, more important than high res monochrome. Especially if you can do Amiga like tricks, like delaying scans so that you start displaying in the middle of a character graphics block, and have icons similarly start at boundaries independent of the character block.