Thats the idea. They cripple the web version so you use the app that can spam you with notifications. I use i.reddit.com which loads up a super fast version clearly designed to work well with an iphone 3.

Faster relative to the website but reddits app just seems... ill. Just not very good.

I have been on connections ranging from 500k, to 500M, to ~2.1G (presumably bottlenecked on the wifi but you get the idea) and the app seems to load at exactly the same rate for me.

Barely related but I've yet to find a home run of an app for this site. I'm using materialistic at the moment but it's nigh impossible to manage replies and I can't see votes.