The 1984 Macintosh's black and white display stands out as a curious decision. The full history of personal computing is complicated. Here are some notes.
Analog Broadcast Link to heading
| Year | Tech |
|---|---|
| 1941 | NTSC B&W Analog Standard |
| 1953 | NTSC B&W Color Standard |
| 1969 | SMPTE C Specification |
| 1987 | SMPTE C Adoption |
The FCC legally mandated standards for how an analog signal could work for black and white and color in 1941 and 1953, respectively. Broadcasts, at least in the United States, had to comply with this regulation to work with televisions in people's homes. SMPTE C is a standard developed by RCA to help broadcasters take advantage of rather than merely comply with the broadcast format. Note the 34 year lag between a standard being mandated and the industry fully embracing it. Many of the milestones to come succeeded by being adjacent to, or piggybacking on television.
Early Computers Link to heading
| Year | Tech | Resolution | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1977 | Commodore PET | 40x25 characters | $800 |
| 1977 | TRS-80 Model I | 64x16 characters | $600 |
| 1977 | Apple II | 48x40 characters | $1,300 |
These listings are mostly for reference. While these three brands were common, the level of churn meant you were as likely to experience an Commodore 64 (1982), a TRS-80 Model III (1980), or a Apple IIe (1983). Spec-based comparisons make limited sense here. What is notable: the Apple II's higher entry price bought greater colors and flexibility[1], guaranteed sound and the ability to swap character sets in memory for custom drawing. This was enough to see it "win out" over its competition.
Digital Broadcast Link to heading
| Year | Tech | Format | Resolution | Pixels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | BT.601 NTSC (American Broadcast) | 525i | N/A | N/A |
| 1982 | SD Digital Television | 480i | 640x480 | 307,200 |
By the time the television and movie industry finally embraced the analog format, digital video technology was mature enough to begin receiving standards of its own. The 4:3 aspect ratio and 640x480 resolution in particular would continue to show up in computers for another couple of decades to allow reuse of both communication channels and designs.
Color or Resolution? Link to heading
| Year | Tech | Resolution | Pixels | Colors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1977 | Apple II Lo-Res | 48x40 | 1,920 | 15 |
| 1977 | Apple II Hi-Res | 280x160 | 44,800 | 6 |
| 1981 | IBM CGA 16-color | 160x100 | 16,000 | 16 |
| 1981 | IBM CGA Mono | 640×200 | 128,000 | 2 |
| 1984 | Macintosh 128K | 512x342 | 175,104 | 2 |
| 1984 | Nintendo NES | 256x240 | 61,440 | 25 |
| 1987 | IBM VGA 256-color | 320x200 | 64,000 | 256 |
| 1987 | IBM VGA 16-color | 640x480 | 307,200 | 16 |
| 1987 | IBM SVGA 256-color | 800x600 | 480,000 | 256 |
| 1987 | IBM XGA 256-color | 1024x768 | 786,432 | 256 |
The Apple II stands out over some of its successors here, owing to a combination of Steve Woznick's ingenuity and fairly severe limitations on how color could be used. The industry as a whole was split adding more colors which was preferred at the time for entertainment versus adding high resolutions for professional work. Sales of VisiCalc and Disk II led Apple to design higher resolutions and professional work.
However, Apple makes a critical error. In contrast to its Apple II predecessor and future IBM standards, the Macintosh offered one graphics mode: high-resolution black & white. Related to the change in graphics, there was no way to run Apple II software including VisiCalc, on a Mac. Apple expected third-parties to fill in the software gap, contracting with Microsoft for a version of Basic to replace Apple Basic and Excel to replace VisiCalc. These plans were slow to be realized, stranded existing users and required purchases beyond the fairly expensive Mac itself ($2,495). While the Mac failed to be backwards compatible to the Apple II, future color Macs had to be compatible with the original Mac. Color was never fully adopted by the system and often under-used outside of graphics intensive applications.
Coda Link to heading
I started writing this as a note to keep the actual numbers that backed the 1984 Mac being grayscale straight. Also, cross-referencing this information from sources gets harder over time. Wikipedia's interests rarely align with my own memories of this period, and their actual sources are decaying as old copies of BYTE magazine (et. al.) are stripped from The Wayback Machine. Rather than complain about that idiocy, I started a Wikipedia account to fix the broken link with one that works. I'm doing my part!
[1]: The Apple II offered a 48x40 monochrome text mode like its competition, 48x40 large pixels in 15 colors, 40x40 large pixels with four lines of text below them or 280x160 small pixels in 6 colors.