Okay, I've been using CS6 since it came out, and it had the same color picker as all the other versions I've used going back to version 5.0 (not *CS* 5.0) You double click on the foreground or background color and go to the picker.
You know, pure hue in the upper right corner of the main box with pure white in the upper left, pure black in the lower left, and 100% black and 100% of the selected hue in lower right and everything in between shown in the middle. There's a spectrum running vertically in a separate box just to the right and if you want to go to a different pure hue you can click somewhere in that and go there.
Where is it? Suddenly this evening the spectrum shows only a gradient from one color to another and the main box shows some screwy box with no pure white no pure black and apparantlyt no way to get the original picker back.
I never made any changes to the preferences. I haven't downloaded any updates for some weeks.
What the hell happened, and how do I get the original settings back?