Hi there 
You’re on point for it all being screen dependent… The reason for this is because the native breakpoint for an ipad in landscape orientation is 1024px and desktop screens are in fact viewed as 922px and wider. So really the tablet landscape is the same resolution as desktop.
Because media queries are based on the width of the browser, to CSS there is no difference between ipad in landscape and a desktop screen. The max you can increase the tablet width viewport to is 991px, so there is no easy way to disable hover affects on ipad in landscape in the designer without added code for every element to you want to disable the hovering on.