March 8, 2026
Spin the color wheel, cue the flame war
What if the Apple ][ had run on Field-Sequential?
Color wheels vs eye strain: would Apple’s first hit even ship
TLDR: An alternate timeline makes old color TV the standard, which could have forced a very different Apple II. Commenters clash over eye‑strain screens, whether “artifact colors” were misnamed, and even GDP stats—while pragmatists say spreadsheets and fast chips would have waited, delaying the PC era.
An alt-history blog asked: what if the Apple II grew up in a world of field‑sequential color—old-school TV that spins through red, green, and blue over time, not all at once. Cue chaos. The comments split fast: one camp argues the Apple II’s famous “artifact colors” label is wrong, because the signal actually carries legit color, and the real “artifact” is the razor‑sharp black‑and‑white patterns. Another camp goes full ethics debate: if skipping the Korean War is what lets this color system win, is weird TV worth it if it also saves millions of lives? One user even drops GDP data and a link, turning a retro-computing thread into an econ showdown.
Reality check time: a photographer chimes in that field‑sequential tech literally breaks when you move your eyes—colors flicker, the illusion cracks—so imagine programming while your screen strobe-trolls you. The nerds pile on with a “what if TV had extra bandwidth” tangent, dreaming of separate color and brightness channels like a clean split. Practical voices say the Apple II equivalent would have waited for a faster chip just to keep 40 columns for spreadsheets, meaning VisiCalc arrives late and the garage‑startup myth gets paused. Meanwhile, memes call it the Color Wheel of Fortune computer. Drama? Delivered.
Key Points
- •The article explores an alternate history where the CBS field‑sequential color TV system prevails, assessing how an Apple ][‑like 8‑bit computer might have been designed under that standard.
- •It outlines a detailed timeline (1950–1953) of the U.S. field‑sequential system: authorization, legal challenges, limited broadcasts in NYC, cessation in 1951, and CBS’s abandonment in 1953.
- •The proposed point of divergence is the absence of the Korean War, removing wartime pressure (via the American National Production Agency) to end color TV and giving CBS time to build market share.
- •By 1953, NBC had a backward‑compatible color approach ready, providing a competing path that ultimately superseded field‑sequential color.
- •Technically, the CBS system interlaced both lines and colors; the author references US Patent 2,304,081 and a 1999 IEEE paper by Peter Goldmark, selecting “System 3” and introducing the term “progressive color frame rate.”