Shawdesh Desk: Sly jazz plays as the camera pans over the rounded shell of a laptop computer. “Is it possible to fall in love with a computer?” asks the soft, sensual voice of Jeff Goldblum, lifting up with disbelief as he pronounces the last word.

Then the screen clicks open, and Goldblum answers his own question. “Oh yes,” he breathes, sounding like a man in rapture. “Oh yes.”

The year was 1999, and the computer that had so ensnared the Jurassic Park star was Apple’s new iBook G3. Like its desktop cousin, the iMac G3, it resembled no other computer on the market: smooth, egg-like, alternating between panels of frosted white and bright, translucent coloured polycarbonate panels. It looked like the spaceship…