You want a coincendence, IBM is business partners with about 8 other companies who produce hardware. Honestly, IBM is a massive company and are basically in control of almost all Apple Hardware. The chipset, everything is designed by IBM engineers, with a few Apple guys adding in a few apple only things.
Apple is not a hardware company like Nintendo would need, you are looking in the wrong direction on this one. How can apple be trusted in a partnership? How do you think Jobs got where he is today, he is every bit as a cut throat business man as every other fortune 500 company leader. Besides, what is apple going to provide for Nintendo? Other than what the Mac freaks will tell you, they design a very strict software base, mostly around user friendly products and music/audio production.
How is Apple a 'perfect partner' anyway. Apple just got overtaken by Linux for the second most OS used, thats not exactly highly competitive, and Apple has almost always been lacking in speed. Apple is a very niche product, very very niche at that, and honestly they are not ready to take a stab at Microsoft for the forseable future, Nintendo is not just quite ready to throw in the towel, not when they have the opportunity to get it all back.
Now lets get onto the shape crap, wow, that isn't even worth talking about. Take a class on marketing, you will see that shapes influence peoples thoughts, it is a basic marketing strategy. The fact that two companies do similar things shouldn't come as a surprise, or a sign for that matter, at all.
I've had enough for one day/end rant