"Nobody caring because most things that occur on hover you can do without," I don't think that's at all true. Yes, the concept of mouseovers could be done with

"Nobody caring because most things that occur on hover you can do without," I don't think that's at all true. Yes, the concept of mouseovers could be done without (if it had been done without from the very beginning), but since so many Flash apps rely on it now, you can't have a decent Flash experience on a device that doesn't have it. Try using many Flash video sites without an ability to mouseover: the controls hide until their moused-over. A click on anything but the controls means "pause". "and websurfing on even the best phone is so fraught with compromises and frustrating relative to a desktop that you really don't care (free)." I strongly disagree. The web on phones before iPhone was indeed compromised and frustrating. But iPhone and some other recent phones have such good browsers that one often hears of people saying they reach for their phone more often than their laptop.