Hover on Multi-touch Devices

Technical Note TN2262: Preparing Your Web Content for iPad:

"For example, a mouse pointer can hover over a webpage element and trigger an event; a finger on a Multi-Touch screen cannot."

This is certainly true for multi-touch devices available now, but I wouldn't be surprised to see, someday, touch-sensitive devices which are also proximity-sensitive.

Update 2010/07/08: Others are thinking about implications of hover on multi-touch devices: http://trentwalton.com/2010/07/05/non-hover/ via http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1497108.

Update 2010/08/14: A recent Ars Technica article, exploring the similarities between the iPad and ST:TNG's PADD, contained a relevant snippet:

"Still, what new frontiers are out there for interacting with computing devices? Michael Okuda believes that removing the touch requirement will bring new advances in gesture-based control. "Once you don't have to physically touch the screen," he told Ars, "I think yet another window is going to open up.""