In a move that surprised absolutely no one who possesses a basic understanding of math or human psychology, Setapp Mobile has announced its scheduled departure from this mortal coil on February 16, 2026. The Verge describes the platform as a market that once held “promise,” which is tech-journalism speak for “it had a cool logo and a venture capitalist’s fever dream for a business plan.”

Let’s talk about that “promise.” Setapp’s core pitch was asking users to pay a monthly subscription fee to access a curated bucket of apps they could probably already find on the official App Store. It turns out that the “Netflix for Apps” model works great for movies, but significantly less well for a collection of task managers and niche utility tools that people usually buy once and then forget to use. The assumption that users were dying for another monthly recurring bill in an economy where “subscription fatigue” is a clinically diagnosable condition was certainly… a choice.

The article suggests that while the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) forced Apple to open its gates, users simply refused to “embrace” the alternative. This frames the failure as a lack of consumer adventurousness, rather than a rational response to a user experience that feels like trying to bypass a security checkpoint at a high-security prison. To install an alternative store in the EU, a user has to click through enough “Are you sure?” warnings and “This might explode your phone” scary-screens to make even the most seasoned pirate think twice. Apple’s “malicious compliance” with the DMA is a masterpiece of dark pattern design; they didn’t just move the goalposts, they electrified them and told the players they had to wear wet socks.

Then there’s the “still-evolving and complex business terms” mentioned by MacPaw. This is a polite, corporate way of saying “Apple’s Core Technology Fee (CTF) is a financial guillotine.” For the uninitiated, Apple decided that even if you don’t use their store, you still owe them €0.50 for every first annual install after a certain threshold. For a subscription service like Setapp, where the margins are already thinner than a 2012 MacBook Air, paying a “success tax” to your primary competitor is a fantastic way to turn a business into a sophisticated charity for Tim Cook’s bonus pool.

The narrative that alternative app stores are failing because users love the “security and convenience” of the official App Store is the ultimate gaslight. They’re failing because Apple built a moat filled with digital alligators and administrative red tape, and then asked why nobody wanted to swim across it. Setapp Mobile isn’t sunsetting because it lacked “promise”; it’s sunsetting because trying to compete with Apple on iOS is like trying to open a rival burger stand inside a McDonald’s where the manager charges you fifty cents every time someone smells your fries.

Rest in peace, Setapp Mobile. You tried to fight the most profitable walled garden in history with a subscription-based utility pack. It was a brave, if entirely predictable, suicide mission. We’ll all remember you for approximately thirty seconds before we go back to paying our 30% Apple Tax and pretending we have a choice. Regardless, if you were one of the three people actually using it, mark your calendars for February 2026—or just start practicing the ancient art of “buying an app once and owning it,” if Apple still allows such radical behavior by then.