Huh, this is interesting…. The original promotional materials and videos for the iPad showed a flash plugin displaying correctly on the iPad. This turned out to be a mistake on behalf of the marketing department….but now, the pictures and video are back… showing flash working on the iPad….

Macrumors is reporting that the promo materials that were pulled so suddenly are back in their original form, showing a flash plugin on a webpage displaying correctly:

The iPad promotional video caused a lot of buzz when it was discovered that it depicted properly working Flash content on NYTimes’ website. As it turns out, the videos are essentially mock-ups and were never purposefully intended to depict the iPad running Flash. Apple was even quick to post a new version of the video properly showing a broken Flash plug-in in the place of the video content. The incident even generated an FTC complaint against Apple for false advertising. So, why would Apple change it back now?

The question is a good one. I can see Apple or their marketing firm making an initial mistake, look to the 13″ Macbook whose marketing materials showed both models having a backlit keyboard when actually only the upper model did. Apple made a mistake there and ended up giving refunds to many of their customers over it. But they corrected the matter fairly quickly and haven’t made a major gaffe like that since.

If they have indeed put the materials up again purposefully, what does this mean for flash on the iPad? We all know how Steve Jobs feels about it, so why the sudden about face?

Maybe it is just a mistake, we’ll probably see another correction soon if so…