I could not agree more. Newson is someone I really want to like because he seems like a cool guy, but I've just never been very impressed with either his work or how he talks about it.
He's most famous for this: http://static0.bornrichimages.com/wp-content/uploads/s3/imag...
Which I find to be a cool idea, but:
a) not very functional b) not very aesthetically pleasing in execution
A lot of that is just my taste, but I did not expect to see the top voted comment here be something I so thoroughly agreed with.
Can you elaborate on this?
Excessive rounded edges, bright pop-colors and lots of plastic seem to me a staple of the 90s. CAM techniques were just starting to hit their stride, so the work from the period often feels like it's just a direct product of the software. Newson's work looks to me like it popped out of a rendering on a Silicon Graphics machine. Karim Rashid, Greg Lyn are easy references. There are many others I can't think of.
It's not just that his work fits the style, but that even his recent work still employs the same techniques.
That being said, his range is impressive. He's capable of working in many different scales and materials. Beside the fact that he's a friend of Ive's, this seems like the best argument for him being a good fit at Apple.