Thanks for the answers, and no problem taking time to respond!
I'm using android, and have tried a few of the SteemIt apps, with varying degree of quality. eSteem does provide notifications, so I did turn them on for replies/mentions. It doesn't seem to be near real time, so it must be polling periodically to determine it. I did see Steemify and am waiting for it to appear on Android.
I have since learned the limitations of bandwidth, which kind of was the missing link to understanding the platform a bit for me. I was wondering how the system attempts to limit the of people freely voting/reblogging/commenting less than quality content since it seems like there was no penalty for spamming. I like the bandwidth approach since as your reputation grows based on your quality of content, you get more bandwidth, etc.
I also learned I wasted alot of votes on voting in the first 30 minutes on new content since I was browsing the new stream alot :)
Thanks for the info!