Marc Newson joins Apple – the pair go hand in hand

One is famous for biomorphic designs that streamline modern materials into futuristic yet sensuously organic shapes. The other is renowned for... actually for pretty much the same thing, as well as some deft electronics.

News that Australian-born designer Marc Newson has joined computer firm Apple does not seem that surprising. You'd be forgiven for thinking he already designed stuff for them, as well for the likes of Pentax and Dom Perignon. After all, the curvaceous lines of the revolutionary (yet largely forgotten) original 1998 iMac had a lot in common with Newson's bioplastic designs for the Italian kitchenware company Alessi. For both Newson and Apple at their best, modern design means a dreamlike meeting of bodies and gadgets, rather than a cold, robotic grandeur.

In many of his most celebrated designs for chairs, domestic utensils and even jet planes, Newson has brought the shapes, at once abstract and ripely physical, that were painted and sculpted by modern artists in the 1920s and 1930s into the technological age. The opulent, bulbous forms imagined by artists such as Jean Arp and Joan Miró reappear in his designs - yesterday's dream art engendering today's functional products.

Newson rejects the severities of the modernist tradition of rectilinear design in favour of a curvy, surrealist unconscious. In our age when machines and their users are ever more integrated, surrealism is arguably the most logical source for everyday, practical stuff. Ultimately, this art of pods and soft interfaces goes back to art nouveau, the fin de siècle style in which objects from metro entrances to wardrobes were given orotund, sensual curves. Thus, Apple's products adopt a strangely intimate relationship with their users. The iPad melts into its owner's daily life as it interacts lightly with fingers and eyes (I'm writing this on an iPad that seems to mimic a living creature in its responsiveness).

Yet Apple, as it announces the forthcoming iWatch, appears to be experiencing some difficulty in selling as many iPads as it would wish. Has it therefore chosen in an anxious moment to restate one of its traditional selling points, the magic of design? Newson has designed watches in the past and it seems likely that he helped create the new timepiece, which is actually a wearable computer. Apple consistently produces more aesthetically pleasing products than its rivals (I am addicted to their look and feel as much as their usefulness). Hiring one of the world's most acclaimed designers is surely an attempt to strengthen that reputation for artistic quality while it continues without Steve Jobs. All of which is good news for those of us who hope the future will be one big dream pod.