Comment 179 for bug 527458

That also may explain the spacing in the indicator applets (room for finger touch).

I guess we have to be happy with alternative applets - for upload/download speeds you can use netspeed applet. There are also alternative battery applets out there, and the gnome-volume-control-applet provides tooltips (although a bit ugly - but if you can relink the icons in your theme directory and rebuild icon cache).