Hands down, the best feature on the Blackberry Playbook from RIM was the fact that you could use (or sideload) Android apps. RIM have now decided to remove this functionality from the Playbook. A collective groan has gone up around the world and no doubt would-be purchasers will now go elsewhere. So why the sudden change of heart for RIM? It was definitely one of the strongest features, offering the best of both worlds. It comes down to piracy. Alec Saunders, VP of developer relations at RIM said “We’re removing side loading for consumers. Pretty sure we’ve got a solution for [developers to install].”

The Blackberry Playbook launched and it had promise. The biggest issue was that the tablet didn't have a native email application. The second issue was the lack of apps available for the Playbook. This looks like it's now been rectified with Playbook OS 2.0. That's right, you can now use Android applications on the Playbook. A very good move by RIM, that and the fact that you no longer need a Blackberry handheld to get email on the device. A snippet from the press release: "Thousands of new apps are being added to BlackBerry App World™ today (including a range of Android® apps that will run on the BlackBerry PlayBook)."

There's a rumour scouring the internet that the RIM Playbook will be able to download and use Android apps. Ok, so it's just a rumour at this stage, but it does make a bit of sense. RIM are looking at a Java VM (Virtual Machine) that will have the ability to run Blackberry legacy applications. The VM that is being looked at is Dalvik which is open source. This is the same open source VM that Google use for Android, thus making the Playbook capable of running Android apps. There are limited Blackberry apps available and there will be even less that are developed for Playbook by the time it surfaces.