TL;DR: Author is in South-Africa and does not have access to 80%[1] of the apps that are available in the US and "European" stores. He's not ranting about the iPad mini, but about the availability of apps.

What a stupid title.

[1] According to him at least

I'm in India and often I see 'this app is not available in this appstore' message (I never kept a count, but it won't be 80%). Since there is no alternative way to load apps, distinction between hardware & software doesn't exist in iPad. If no apps, the device is useless.

Does anyone know why most of these apps are released in only some countries? What is holding back developers from just releasing globally?

Stop buying products that only allow you install applications from a single source. Would you reward a car manufacturer that forced you to use only their roads and their gas? You will almost always regret tying yourself to single vendor options.

Given that you found so many web pages outlining the problem tells me you could have easily researched this before you purchased the product. You didn't. Your fault.

Angry Birds was released in South Africa earlier this week. Almost 4 years later.