As much as I love CSS, I could never see myself using any of this technology because jQuery (and many other JS frameworks) can do this with less code, simpler syntax and more browser coverage.
The Smashing Magazine article is not using the shorthand declarations for -webkit-animation, which would compact it much more.
Give it a spin, you will be pleasantly surprised, especially when it comes to tiggering the animation (with :hover).
You are right that browser coverage is a joke, but support is there in FF Aurora (who knows about IE10).
Though I love jQuery.animate(), it just can't match the GPU-rendering speed on CSS3 transitions and animations. If you can afford the development time, it's absolutely worth it.