But there's hope. My time with the showed me that RIM is capable of greatness, but the company still has serious work to do if it wants to get back on track. Here's what needs to be done:

Fix the Playbook OS

There are glimpses of beauty in the Blackberry Playbook. The swipe-based gestures are clever, and the approach to multitasking makes iOS and Android look silly. But at every turn, the Playbook OS is undermined by crashing apps, weird glitches, and little frustrations. There's that whole missing e-mail and calendar issue, which will eventually be fixed, but more importantly, the Playbook needs a serious spit-shine. (My biggest pet peeve: Finger taps that don't register in the browser.)

Get the Big Apps

Plead with Netflix. Appeal to Twitter. Make a deal with Zynga. Pay big bucks to Marco Arment for his (assuming he'd accept). Find out why Kindle's promise of a is, at the moment, unfulfilled. Do what it takes to bring some headliners to the Playbook, because Need for Speed and Tetris isn't cutting it. Fast app switching is one of the Playbook's greatest assets, and it's being squandered by an App World filled with junk. An may help, but it's no panacea.