( Wired ) -- Maybe Apple approved Skyfire , an iPhone web browser that plays Flash videos , to prove a point : Flash is losing relevance . Despite widespread excitement over the first app to work with Adobe 's plug-in , it turns out that Skyfire is n't very useful . My hands-on time with the app , which came out Wednesday ( and quickly `` sold out , '' according to the developer 's press release ) , was an eye-opening experience . The app 's primary function is to take websites that use embedded Flash video and automatically transcode that video into HTML5 so that it 's viewable on the iPhone , iPad or iPod Touch . CNNMoney : iPhone Flash app pulled from Apple . To test it , I had to find a popular website loaded with Flash video . The search was difficult . I looked at several video-heavy websites , only to realize they were already HTML5-ready . Examples include The Onion , DailyMotion , ESPN , CollegeHumor and CNET . The biggest video websites -- YouTube and Vimeo -- have moved to HTML5 , too . I also found a report showing 54 percent of web video is now HTML5 compatible . ( Note that Skyfire only displays Flash video -- not games , animations , ads , etc . ) Eventually a Twitter follower pointed me to a website where Skyfire really came in handy : CWTV . When Skyfire detected I was trying to play a Flash video , a play button popped up at the bottom of the browser , and the app did its job : Within 5 seconds I was streaming an episode of `` Smallville . '' ( Hurray , I guess . ) There are some other Flash-dependent websites that work well on Skyfire , like the `` Daily Show '' and `` Colbert Report . '' But the browser did n't play all Flash videos . I loaded the TED Talks website , which is a gallery of Flash videos , and Skyfire did n't transcode the videos . I tried playing a Flash video on CNN.com , and Skyfire did n't transcode it , either . But it does n't matter so much in those cases , because there are already iOS apps for both TED Talks and CNN , which are capable of playing their videos . Another major exception is Hulu , whose videos are encoded in Flash . But it 's not Skyfire 's fault that you ca n't view Hulu videos . Because of licensing terms , the company does n't allow mobile devices to stream Hulu videos for free , as you could with a computer by visiting Hulu.com . Instead , the company wants you to pay a monthly subscription fee through the Hulu iOS app . If you try visiting Hulu.com through Skyfire , you get a message saying it 's not supported . Frankly I had a tough time finding reasons to use Skyfire . My hands-on testing of the app made me feel that Flash does n't matter anymore ( not nearly as much as it used to before the iPad hit stores in April ) . But Skyfire was a hot seller when it launched Wednesday -- so hot that the developers pulled it from the store because of traffic overload , then labeled it `` sold out . '' All this leads me to conclude that the underlying reason is the one big chunk of the web that 's still not available on the iPhone or iPad : free porn . Indeed , many porn-streaming websites still rely on Flash . That makes me believe that the tipping point for Flash to become irrelevant is when the most-popular porn sites shift to HTML5 . My `` research '' tells me that day is n't far away . In the meantime , Skyfire may have only limited utility for most of the web , but it makes a fine porn browser . Subscribe to WIRED magazine for less than $ 1 an issue and get a FREE GIFT ! Click here ! Copyright 2010 Wired.com .
Despite widespread excitement , it turns out that Skyfire is n't very useful . The app 's primary function is to transcode that video into a format suitable for streaming on the web ( which means you have to download and install an additional application ). Some Flash-dependent sites that work well on Skyfire , are `` Daily Show '' and `` Colbert Report ''