Comment 178 for bug 527458

I can see from Mark's view that there needs to be an alternative to
tooltips on tablets. However, at the moment such devices are 'toys'.
In comparison to traditional laptops/desktops they are not as good for
getting work done (depending on the work). This will probably change as
they mature many years down the track, and you never know - getting work
done may end up being more productive on a tablet, and who knows, games
might evolve to become more enjoyable on tablets. The world of tablets
may be the end of tooltips.

But this is the present, and most people use desktops/laptops for work
(and will for quite some time). A separate release for tablets could
safely remove tooltips, but they serve an important role in
desktop/laptop environments. I can also see that to develop a tablet
version of Ubuntu will be tricky because of the small userbase - perhaps
that is why some 'experiments' are appearing in desktop versions of Ubuntu?

This post is obviously a stab in the dark, but none of Mark's posts have
provided any solid justification for removing tooltips. Guessing there
may be a hidden agenda there :)