I appreciate frankness. A lot of the animations are just standard, out of the box iOS animations, like the push/pop navigation between UIViewControllers. I would imagine that most users like and expect these.
Great point. I am certainly behind the times. However, I can only recall seeing textual animations like those in other HN readers, despite having 166 apps installed on my primary iOS device. Happily (for me anyway ;-), MiniHack is free of them.