Did they really care about color? The original Mac didn't have color (it didn't get color until about System 7?) I think they chose higher-resolution over color. It's the same with the NeXT I believe, higher-resolution is more important than color.
According to this MacOS got OS-level color management in 1993, and Windows wouldn't get it for another 4 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_management#Operating_sys...
According to Wikipedia, the Macintosh II [1] came out in 1987, System 4.0, with 256 colors--for the equivalent of $17,000. I doubt color calibration is much use with 256 colors (although apparently the Mac II support 16.7 million colors but you could only use 256 of them), but I can't find anything on when color calibration was supported.