Brand: MacNews

Formac today announced that it has teamed up with Pantone and ColorVision to offer a new Formac gallery 1740 CAL bundle that includes its award-winning 17-inch flat-panel display and the Pantone ColorVision Spyder color-calibration device. Formac trumpets the bundle as the world’s first real CRT replacement for color-critical work. The 1740 CAL bundle is available with an ADC-equipped gallery 1740 display for US$1,149, or with a DVI-equipped model for $1,199.

After a month-long hiatus, MacDesktops is back online and resuming its daily updates. The site offers nearly 2,000 pictures, from art to Apple-themed.

Nicholas Gustilo has released a public beta of PocketBackup, a simple, new utility for Mac OS X for quickly creating backups. Backups can be saved to other drives as Mac standard disk images or burned to CDs; the final release will include support for encrypted backups and timed backups. PocketBackup is US$20 shareware.

Scott Kelby’s latest book, Macintosh… The Naked Truth will begin shipping this week. The 240-page paperback is described as “an irreverent, off-the-wall, PC-slammin’, totally-biased look at Apple, and what it’s like being a Mac user in a PC-dominated world.” The Naked Truth is available for order for US$19.95. Kelby is best known as Editor-in-Chief of MacDesign magazine and Photoshop User Magazine, and as the President of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals.

Objective Development has released LaunchBar 3.2, a new version of its popular Mac OS X utility for launching applications, documents, URLs and more by typing an abbreviation. Version 3.2 adds improved search speeds, support for additional file operations, support for browsing open applications backwards, and more than a dozen other improvements. LaunchBar sells for US$19.95.